Moneyball Essay

The film Moneyball was based on the bestselling non-fiction hold by financial journalist Michael Lewis, the film tells the true story of how Beane and his youthful economics-whiz assistant turned or so the fortunes of the Oakland Athletics by using a new access code called sabermetrics. This involved using statistics to analyze how many a nonher(prenominal) times players stayed on base (thereby increasing their likelihood to score runs), rather than relying on the traditional mode of valuing players batting average. This new approach allowed Beane to buy players he could actually afford, and take on the top major(ip) league teams using a different strategy than they did.The first thing about Moneyball to analyze is what makes wand Beane a leader. As we discussed in class, he had a vision and he worked for it creating a bold plan, accept in his vision, and having the resolve to take care his plan through. Billy Beane redoubled his efforts to make his vision a success. He trad ed players who had the wrong attitude and met face-to-face with the remaining players to explain his direction over and over. Beanes resolve and perseveration paid off, and the As went on to win 109 games that year.Whats the lead lesson? Well, it helps to take note that Moneyball is not strictly a baseball story. It is also a story of rapid change in leadership in the business world. In the film Beane changes from participative to autocratic to paternalistic leadership styles.Analyzing this movie from the leadership nerve you can see that not all leadership models apply to every single case, evidence shows that Beane at the beginning used participative leadership style. The baseball establishment is mostly appalled by Billys novel approach to team selection, including his own coaches. The manager accused him of denigrating what scouts have done for one hundred fifty years, and ruining the team. He also faces a major blocker to success fine art Howe, the team manager. Art decide s who takes the field and, having not bought into the approach, refuses to field players who might make the approach work.In this part Beane realizes that a participative approach wont give him the result that he was looking for and he changes to an autocratic approach to bemuse results. Consequently, Billy takes swift action by selling two more of his best players, one to check Art from meddling with team selection, and one because hes a disruptive influence in the dressing room. Things didnt go well and when the team starts badly, the critics feel vindicated. Only then does Billy understand that he made a mistake because first he hasnt committed himself 100% to his own approach, and here and now he failed helping others to buy into it. Autocratic leaders need to communicate. When Beane realized that, he started to open up to the people who are being affected by his decisions, sharing his strategy, and recruiting others to do the same.And finally we can see the last change of le adership to paternalistic style when Billy Beane is seen to learn some important management lessons himself during the course of Moneyball. When we first see him, he has a strict policy of distancing himself from players, which he thinks earns him greater obeisance and makes it easier to let players go when necessary. Yet gradually Beane learns that he can accomplish more, and inspire others, by actually talking to his team and letting them in on his unusual strategies. Here he is getting enveloping(prenominal) to his players explaining the approach, getting by and building team spirit. He even encourages other potential leaders indoors the team. Youre smart, you get what were trying to do here, he tells an ageing, cynical but talented player.