Organizational Behavior

The top leader in the organization is replaced.  The faces around you on the team begin to change.  The organization, in the words of management, is ‘going in a different direction.’  New strategies are drawn up, a new playbook is devised.  The organization begins to lose the previous players as the work load and game plans shift to new leadership, who wish to bring in their own players.  All normal organizational behavior over a period of time.

Except with the Boston Red Sox.  They have to be more dramatic.

A friend and I traveled to Fenway Park last Thursday for a game against the Anaheim Angels (sorry, can’t use the other name).  By the end of the second inning, the Sox led 6-0 and appeared in control.  The Angels scored 8 runs in the top of the third, and the roller coaster began.  The game was marked by poor fielding, lousy pitching, a questionable home run, and a ton of runs scored with two outs.  In the fifth inning, my friend opined that the game would end up 13-12; that was the score at some point in the ninth inning, but it mercifully ended after ten innings with California winning, 14-13.

This was a watershed moment for the Sox, and the final straw for management.  They are not making the playoffs this year, and wedges in the locker room have appeared as a number of players apparently met with ownership to complain about first-year manager Bobby Valentine.

So by Saturday morning, management cleaned house.  In a dramatic move (even for drama-obsessed Red Sox Nation), key components of the team were traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers – power-hitter Adrian Gonzalez, outfielder Carl Crawford, starter Josh Beckett, and backup infielder Nick Punto.

The General Manager termed the trade a salary adjustment; the three primary players represented a huge chunk of their payroll.  He determined the team was not going to win with them, so the trade gives the team more payroll to work with during the off-season.

But the true message here is about who is in charge.  Before Saturday morning, this was not Bobby Valentine’s team.  Gonzalez, Beckett, Punto (and backup catcher Kelly Stoppach, who was banished two weeks ago) were all part of the group grousing about Valentine’s methods.  I can envision Valentine going to management and saying, I can’t win with these guys.  You hired me to bring Boston back to the World Series; it won’t happen with this group.  Let me put my type of players on the field.

Basic organizational transitions happen in baseball as anywhere else.  New management, new leadership, new direction.  Out with the old.   It generally takes longer than a few days.

Of course, I could be wrong.  Someone pointed out to me that the final proof will be if Bobby is still there when the 2013 season begins next April.

If he’s not, the overhaul will take another new direction with a different team.

Wicked Problems and Health Care

The Supreme Court has upheld the Affordable Care Act.  In what has been called an act of pragmatism over ideology, Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion that allows the Act to stand.

Beyond the ideological lines that have been drawn, the existence of this Act says something dramatic about American society, and how we govern.  The rhetoric of the past dozen years has made many of us believe that the political schisms are so wide that we cannot decide any issue, no matter how minute.

The most interesting analysis comes in an article by Atul Gawande in The New Yorker.  Dr. Gawande is a physician, and has written interesting books on the medical realm, and social order in general.  His observation harks back to a social study done some decades ago:

In 1973, two social scientists, Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, defined a class of problems they called “wicked problems.” Wicked problems are messy, ill-defined, more complex than we fully grasp, and open to multiple interpretations based on one’s point of view. They are problems such as poverty, obesity, where to put a new highway—or how to make sure that people have adequate health care.

Gawande also describes the process that opponents go through to rationalize opposition to health care -- or any major social/political issue.  In many cases, opponents have a basis or foundation of belief that is understandable, and I can respect those who have core belief sets.  But our social systems change, whether economic, governmental, demographic.  We need to change with them.

Grandfather Clock

As I got off the bus on a recent morning, I looked at the clock tower on Albany City Hall.  The hands were missing from the clock face.

My first thoughts were of Captain Kangeroo.  I watched that show regularly as a child.  I vividly remember the eerie feeling I got whenever Grandfather Clock, a regular talking character, was missing from his place in the corner.  Captain would explain that he was 'out for repairs', but I felt an acute sense of loss, as if Grandfather had been abducted or disappeared.  What's wrong with him? We should all be worried, Captain! What does Mr. Moose or Bunny Rabbit think, how will they act without their friend?

The missing clock left a tall section of faded paint in the corner.  It  reminded me of death, as if a favorite dog was no longer wagging its way around the house.

So it felt strange when I saw the empty clock face on the City Hall tower.  The perfect brown circle only had a dot in the middle, an analog device missing one long arm and one short, no numbers around its borders to measure against.  A lost face, no longer marking our day.