Thursday, December 29, 2005

The Success of John Schuerholz

Ah....who is John Schuerholz you might be asking....fair enough. Schuerholz is the general manager of the Atlanta Braves of Major League Baseball. He has been the GM for 15 years and has enjoyed a dominating run. 1 World Series win, 4 World Series appearances (National League pennants), and 8 Eastern Division championships. That's impressive.

I've fallen a bit behind in my blog reading and posting. "Some of the Top 10 Reasons Why John Schuerholz' Team Keeps Kicking Axe" was posted in November in Management By Baseball. I highly recommend this site to anyone that likes baseball, management and analytics. This article outlines Schuerholz' success over the years and tries to provide some insight into why, in this era of business school GMs, he has been so successful.

Jeff Angus, gives us 4 reasons:

Schuerholz had a diverse set of experiences and jobs before he entered baseball - He had many different kinds of jobs which introduced him to different types of co-workers, clients, customers and managers. He adapted to all of them. Often.

Schuerholz gathered knowledge of methods in all his work - He learned to adapt to many different types of situations. Learned.

I can promise you that if you had to choose between an MBA without this kind of job experience, or the opposite, an aspiring manager who wants to be successful with dynamic competition is significantly better off with the background Schuerholz has.
Schuerholz is not a Methods Bigot - Again...he adapts. He adapts his methodologies. He recognizes the value the new crop of young GMs bring to the game. (Let's not forget that he himself might have been the prototype for this phenomenae. He was pretty young himself.) He adjusts. He incorporates.

Schuerholz is not afraid of internal competition - He is not intimated by talented people on his staff.

Great read about a great manager. Go check it out.

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