Week Seven Case - Personality in Team Compositions

The Personality of the Chicago Cubs

One thousand seven hundred and twenty-eight players. Fifty managers. That's how many people represented the Chicago Cubs between 1908 their prior world series title and 2016 when their long drought ended. That 1908 team had played in the era of Mark Twain, Florence Nightingale, and the Ottoman Empire. How did the franchise break though after all that time? Much of the credit can be given to a new owner, a new president of baseball operations, and a focus on personality.

The new owner is To0m rickets, the director of TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation. The new president of baseball operations is Theo Epstein, previously the general manager of the Boston Red Sox, and assembler of a two-time World Series champion in that city. Rickets had been impressed with Epstein's personality as they discussed a position with the Cubs.

"He was the kind of person who treats people with respect," Rickets noted. "He was honest and candid about his successes and failures."

Epstein is also enormously curious, a trait fueled by a family where every minute watching baseball had to be matched by tie reading books.

"A double header was a lot of reading," recalled Epstein. The Cubs manager, Joe Maddon, offered his own take on Epstein's personality: "He's brilliant, he's sabermetrically inclined, he's old school, he understands old-school scouting techniques, he understands the game, but all of the guys I've met, he's more empathetic than all of them. He understands people. And he feels what they feel."

Much like how books fueled his curiosity, Epstein attributes that empathy to his family and his upbringing. "Maybe it's part of being a twin. I'm a twin. My mom's a twin. My grandfather's a twin."

Regardless of where his traits came from, Epstein went about retooling the Cubs with his own emphasis on personality. He wanted players with the right "makeup" - who would create the proper "ethos" in the clubhouse. Some of that emphasis came from the failures of his most recent Red Sox clubs, but it was also a simple evolution of his own views on managing people. The word that he most often uses is "character" - a sense that players will work hard, do the right thing, fit into the team concept, and overcome adversity. "We are not going to compromise character for talent," Epstein vowed. "we're the Cubs. We're going to have both. Talent and character."

How exactly has Epstein prioritized personality in shaping the Cubs? One way is by instructing his scouts to get to know prospects as people. Scouts are instructed to list three examples of a times when players have overcome adversity on the field, and three examples of times they've done so off the field. Scouts are also instructed to ask anyone they can about the prospects' traits and qualities, from guidance counselors to girlfriends to family members. How does the prospect treat others when no one is looking? Is the prospect motivated by money and fame or competition and winning? Short scouting reports with boxes to be checked were quickly replaced by detailed summaries several pages long. Speaking of Kyle Schwarber, one of the team's better hitters, Epstein recalled, "Scouts loved the bat. Wall loved the bat. Our statistical model loved the bat. And makeup was huge. Stan Zielinksi, the area scout, did a great job getting to know Kyle inside and out... he's the perfect player to have as a franchise player because he can be on your best players who everybody else wants to follow because of his character."

Another way is by prioritizing everyday positional players over pitchers who only start once every five games. Noted Epstein, "And there was a lot of good arms available so the debate in the draft room really crystallized. It was like, 'We can choose a pitcher who is going to move quickly and can help us win every fifth day, but pitchers have really hard time leading. They can lead the starting rotation after they get established a little bit, but it's hard for them to lead the team... We are going to define our identity... we want players who are invested in their teammates... we want players we trust can respond to adversity. We want players other players like being around." By focusing on players who are on the field every day, Epstein wound up creating a culture - not just a collection of personality traits.

Epstein feels vindication for his personality focus by comparing the 2016 team to some of the other Cubs teams that had made the playoffs a decade earlier. "What was the personality of those Cubs teams?" he asked. "They had been to the playoffs in '07, '08, but what was the personality? Who were the leaders?" The 2016 team had those leaders and that was by design.

Source:

Adopted from Case: Chicago Cubs in Organizational Behavior: Improving Performance and Commitment in the Workplace by Colquitt, LePine, & Wesson, 6th ed. McGraw-Hill

Read the week seven case and select one of the following questions to answer:

1. Noted leadership expert Robert Greenleaf claimed the "secret of institution building is to be able to weld a team of such people by lifting them up to grow taller than they would otherwise be." What role does personality play in Epstein's building of the Chicago Cubs as an institution and how does it connect to Greenleaf's point?
2. Epstein was intentional about who he picked to be on his team, but did not go so far as to implement personality inventories as part of his recruiting process. Would it be wise for the Cubs to use personality tests for the purposes of recruiting? Why or why not?
3. Are there any downsides to Epstein's approach to prioritizing "character" of his recruits? If so what are they and should they alter the overall strategy for recruiting and managing players?