The
Giants’ amazing performance in the World Series has got me thinking - baseball
is a pretty interesting game on a lot of counts. For one thing, while playing
the game requires a team of nine players, a baseball club is not a team in the
same way that teams occur in other sports. Soccer, hockey, rugby, basketball
are what I would call true team sports. While in all those games players have
assigned roles, they require ongoing coordination among the players. In
baseball coordination is required only on defense, and then usually between two
or at most three players. The pitcher and catcher must coordinate ongoingly,
but others only occasionally and some not at all. On offense, baseball reverts
to individual contests - batter against pitcher, base runner against pitcher or
catcher or the infielder barring his slide.
It
may be the high requirement for individual performance that has us love
baseball in the first place. The same Americans who disparage soccer for its
supposed lack of action (read lack of scoring) find baseball balletic and
interesting even though soccer is 90 minutes of non-stop action and a 3 hour
baseball game may see 45 minutes of actual action, widely dispersed.
In
soccer or any of what I'm calling "true team sports," the
individual's performance is subsumed in the team's. There are stars, but even a
Pele or Ronaldo can't force a win if the team is not playing. In baseball one
player can make a difference, whether it's by pitching a no-hitter, by a
superior batting performance, or by spectacular fielding, and I think that individuality
is what makes baseball the quintessential American game.
We
Americans love team effort and collective achievement, but we prize individual
accomplishment more than perhaps any other people in the world. We want to
believe that one person, on their own, can lead us to glory or save the day.
Our political system, our business culture, and our social milieu all reflect
this, and it is the demand we make, implicitly or explicitly on those who
volunteer for leadership positions at every level from local government to our
schools, to the Presidency, and everything in between.
At
the same time we are rarely surprised when these idols we look to to lead us
turn out to have feet of clay. When a Barry Bonds or Lance Armstrong or Melky
Cabrera are found to be grasping an unfair advantage through use of
performance-enhancing drugs, when a businessman like Bernie Madoff turns out to
be a crook, when an entertainer like Charlie Sheen comes a cropper, we are
disappointed but not really shocked. With the hunger for individuality and
leadership comes the secret resentment that we are not the individual who is
leading, and a degree of schadenfreude when they topple.
I
believe that it's this culture of individual achievement that is the key to
America's success, not some mystical exceptionalism that we somehow carry with
us, and this culture is also what limits us as a nation. We claim to place a
high value, particularly in the business world, on teamwork, but it is the
highly visible, big ego executive we venerate, despite a lot of compelling
evidence that the most effective leaders, particularly CEOs, keep a low profile
and make sure that the credit and glory goes to those who report to them.
I’m
not saying there is no place for individual excellence – to the contrary, extraordinary
individuals obviously contribute to high performance – I do say that when it
becomes all about the star, performance suffers, and when we ignore the
importance of true teamwork – a high level of coordination and collaboration
that often requires subordination of ego and personal credit to the larger
interests of the enterprise – we lose important access to what makes companies,
organizations, and governments perform at a high level.
When I see political leaders who are criticized
for being thoughtful, for listening to points of view other than their own and
their party’s, for actually seeking to find common ground rather than to
capitalize on differences, I’m not surprised that the culture of America looks
like it does. Hopefully, we will change that on November 6th.
Be sure to vote – it’s important.
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