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Moneyball teams

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Re: Moneyball teams

#21

Post by GavinMcG »

dvt wrote: post #12
GavinMcG wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't have said that Moneyball is all about intuition vs. evidence, with intuition trumping evidence. Rather the other way around: the A's acquired talent that the evidence suggested was underpriced, disrupting the traditional intuition-based scouting approach. It seems like you've got that backwards.

I really disagree, and I Podesta would also: [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/plato-pop/201109/moneyb... [2] http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/09/23/the-l... According to Podesta: "Subjectivity ruled the day in evaluating players ... We had a completely new set of metrics that bore no resemblance to anything you’d seen. We didn’t solve baseball. But we reduced the inefficiency of our decision m…

That supports exactly what I was saying: "In the competition between intuition vs. evidence, evidence wins."

So it's not clear why you are saying "In the case of the A's, intuition seemed to trump evidence, but the author keeps telling us to collect more evidence (in the form of matrices, skill trees, or whatever else). Not only is that the categorically wrong approach, it's also not how you build good teams." (Emphasis mine.)

Re: Moneyball teams

#22

Post by sesteel »

This is a pretty important lesson that gets lost at times. Teams with people of diversified passions work well; if everybody is super into data structures, UX, security, etc., then debates can rage and feelings can get hurt. When people on a team specialize differently, everybody can be a mentor to everybody else. To me, that is a great team to be on.

Re: Moneyball teams

#23

Post by AceJohnny2 »

m52go wrote: post #4

Thinking aloud...I wonder if the ancient Greek methods of sortition and ostracism have any place in building teams at companies. Obviously election (selecting people from a group) is hit-or-miss anyway...so maybe reverse-election (eliminating people from a group) could help.

As a kid, one of the comic books I loved was the sci-fi Scrameustache [1]. One of the recurring characters was a society of aliens called "Galaxians", who's society was based on extreme sortition. Every week (or day?), they traded posts. One would be a squad leader one day and the janitor the next.

Even as a kid, I realized this was a flawed concept, because it assumed experience and knowledge were fungible. Still, it was fun to think about...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrameustache [2] http://www.bedetheque.com/serie-682-BD-Scrameustache.html

Re: Moneyball teams

#24

Post by rhizome »

shallot_router wrote: post #16
ktRolster wrote: post #3

Or, hire the best, and make a team out of them. Or hire people with high potential and push them to reach it. Or, hire people who can get the job done. One thing for sure: if you have mind-numbing processes, "the best" will leave, and others will not reach their potential.

Yeah, these "don't do [hip thing], do [contrarian but normal/common sense] thing" articles (or the reverse of them) are becoming a bit tired. You should have good team-building and organizational skills and good technical hiring skills.

Everybody thinks they're doing the common-sense thing and not being contrarian, even if it's the hip thing.

Re: Moneyball teams

#25

Post by rhizome »

jph wrote: post #18

Moneyball and Six Thinking Hats are excellent approaches to for people and roles. But they aren't enough. The key driver of top-tier teams is excellent ongoing safe communication. To build communications, use team goals (e.g. OKRs & KPIs), team ways of working (e.g. TEAM FOCUS), and team positions (e.g. scorecards). My notes about these are open source: https://joelparkerhenderson.github.io/ Edit to explain abbreviat…

Is "TEAM FOCUS" an initialism, or is it there for EMPHASIS?

Re: Moneyball teams

#28

Post by [deleted] »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #2

Presumably you have teams of Web-stack ("Fullstack") developers. This caveat should have been put up front. Since "Best" is a vague loaded term it's more accurate to understand the problem that you're trying to solve. If you are creating a new web-standard or industry shifting technology then you absolutely need the best. If you are creating a new web based CRM for firefighters, then you need someone who is good, but…

[deleted]

Re: Moneyball teams

#29

Post by marcofloriano »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #20
georgeecollins wrote: post #11

I wish I could triple like this! Hire the best is lazy thinking. * I have been on teams that were not considered the best until they had success, then everyone on the team was a "star". * I have worked places where they only hire "superstars"-- and were pretty serious about paying for good talent and being picky-- and still failed for all kinds of organizational reasons. Teams with more role players, or more cohesion…

At a former (large, organizationally deficient) company, there was this small team of 5 people with very different specialties (and personalities). They were a "strike team" of sorts, tasked with helping out at a technical level different projects that were in trouble. They were excellent. They saved my team's integration of a camera co-processor in an SoC. But finally a re-org came around and some high-level manager…

What's your criteria to measure "quality of the people", in this context?

Re: Moneyball teams

#30

Post by Spooky23 »

georgeecollins wrote: post #11

I wish I could triple like this! Hire the best is lazy thinking. * I have been on teams that were not considered the best until they had success, then everyone on the team was a "star". * I have worked places where they only hire "superstars"-- and were pretty serious about paying for good talent and being picky-- and still failed for all kinds of organizational reasons. Teams with more role players, or more cohesion…

I got a good perspective on this from little league coaching.

Sometimes that "superstar" kid is individually talented, but a net-negative on the team if the kid is a ball hog or doesn't share.

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