Cultures of Winning

The 2012 Red Sox season was a disaster.  The team went 69-93 for a last place finish in the American League East and they had the third worst record in the AL.  The 2013 Red Sox, by contrast, currently have the best record in baseball and lead the AL East by 9.5 games.  So, what happened?

The 2012 season came directly on the heels of the apocalyptic 2011 season.  After acquiring sluggers Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford, hopes were high for the team.  The Boston Herald and Michael Holley (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) both anointed them the "Best Team EVER" (2:14 in the WEEI link for the audio).  Mikey Adams predicated 103 wins for the Sox.  They even announced over the offseason that they were aiming to win the World Series, which of course is always the goal, but most front offices don't outright say that.  The season was largely a success and the Sox held a 9.5 game in the AL Wild Card race over the Tampa Bay Rays on September 3rd.  The team, as everyone knows, wound up missing the playoffs due to a 7-20 record (.259 winning percentage) for the month of September.

After this historic collapse, a range of controversial topics emerged.  Manager Terry Francona, whom many consider to be the greatest manager in Red Sox history, was fired, as many thought he had lost control of his clubhouse.  General manager Theo Epstein was traded to the Cubs.  The chicken and beer scandal emerged (it's worth noting that since that article was published, we found out that John Lackey pitched most of the season while needing Tommy John surgery.  I'm willing to give his shortcomings a pass on that basis).  And, Bobby Valentine was hired as the team's new manager, which would later lead to speculation that new GM Ben Cherington was not given his pick of manager, instead being overrode by team president Larry Lucchino.

Despite having basically the same talent as the previous year, the 2012 Red Sox stunk.  The clubhouse was, by all accounts, toxic.  From Bobby V.'s "Nice inning, Will" comment to Carl Crawford constantly complaining that the Boston media was too tough on him, there was not much clubhouse cohesion.  And then, on August 25th, the Los Angeles Dodgers threw the Red Sox a bone.  The Sox were able to trade the Dodgers proverbial turds Gonzalez, Crawford, and Josh Beckett (as well as Nick Punto, who was not a turd) for some pocket lint and a couple of half-smoked cigarettes.

This trade basically let Ben Cherington press a reset button on the team and allowed him to build it from the ground up in his mold.  His first move was, not surprisingly, to fire Bobby Valentine and replace him with former pitching coach John Farrell.  Cherington then went on a binge of signing "good guys": David Ross, Johnny Gomes, Mike Napoli, and Shane Victorino.  The general feeling around the city--and my hunch--was that this group of ball players wasn't talented enough to contend for the playoffs, much less a world title, and that the 2013 season would be a "bridge year" until youngsters Xander Bogaerts and Jackie Bradley, Jr. (amongst others) would be ready for full-time jobs in 2014.

Bridge year indeed.

The Red Sox have reverted some to their 2003-2004 form when they were a bunch of Idiots who rallied behind the slogan "Cowboy Up".  They've stopped shaving as a form of brotherhood.  They breathe baseball and don't want to think about anything else, unlike Josh Beckett's famed "My off day is my off day" golf outing on an injured back the previous year.

Throughout the season, Tony Massarotti has been saying that the Red Sox didn't have enough talent to be a serious contender; that their lack of talent would eventually catch up to them.  And I agreed.  But what both Mazz and I did not account for is the importance of culture in an organization.  That culture can make up for shortcomings in other areas.  The 2013 Red Sox are the prototypical example of this.  Not only do they have a winning attitude, their culture is one of hard work and success.  Career coaches will say that people who work hard are often more successful than those who try to coast by on talent, and the Red Sox have shown us exactly that.

A classic example of over-the-top talent is the original Dream Team.  Coach Chuck Daly was worried that his group of NBA superstars would march into the Olympics thinking they were invincible due to their obscene talent level and might get surprised.  To combat this, he held a scrimmage against a group of college all-stars and through his coaching decisions, he threw the game.  The lesson he wanted to have reach his team was that despite their potential, a poor attitude could lead them to failure.  The rest of the story is history.

Throughout my life, my father has preached to me the importance of culture in organizations.  That establishing a healthy culture in an organization is of the utmost importance and that failure to instill such a culture will ultimately whittle away at the success of the organization.  When I worked at Infinity and asked citizen-owners (Infinity only has employees insofar as they have people they submit W-2s for; instead, they have citizen-owners.  This is a major part of the culture there because it implies that the workers take ownership over the company, their work, and that they all work together as a team) what their favorite part about Infinity was, the unanimous response was the culture.  They said that working at Infinity was unlike any other company they had worked for, and, as a result, they were happier.  A happy worker is a productive worker.  And to circle back around to the Red Sox, the players are happy playing baseball, and who would have guessed that they are now playing baseball well.

I called this article "Cultures of Winning" because there is not one distinct "winning" culture (and "winning" can be more broadly defined as success).  Each organization will be strong in certain cultural areas and weak in others; the organization (both leaders and what I'll call followers) need to work to come up with a culture that will lead to its success.  Once a winning culture is established though, the organization must continue to work to maintain that culture.