In the New
Ball Game: Two Strikes and You're Out
Baseball loves to live in the past, refusing to make
changes while its core audience ages. In business today, changing quickly and
boldly is an absolute imperative.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation
and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology
They
keep talking about ideas, such as a pitch clock, designed to speed up the pace
of baseball games, which right now are a lot like watching paint dry -- albeit
even less colorful. I expect a few more years will pass before anything major
happens in the majors although the leading sports teams have finally realized
that encouraging cellphone use and engagement in the ballparks and arenas is
smarter than trying to restrict it or blocking WiFi access.
Side-by-side,
real time commentary and even mobile only video replays enhance and improve the
fans' experience and engagement. As sports betting continues along the path
toward complete legalization (right behind pot), fans' phones will become an
even more central part of the in-venue activities. And, of course, e-sports are
exploding across the world with attractive demographics that couldn't be more
appealing to the old white guys who continue to dominate the ownership of the
country's sports teams. According to Nielsen, more than half of baseball fans
are over 55 and the average fan age is around 53 as compared with the NFL
average age of 47 and the NBA's 37. You can expect to see prunes at the
concession stands pretty soon instead of pretzels.
Finally,
a little-known fact, but a critical commercial consideration, is that in the
course of the season, there are on average four times the number of butts in
the good seats than the actual number of season ticket holders. The only consistently
effective way to identify those folks (guests, season sharers, scalpers, etc.)
is to grab their email addresses or cellphone numbers. Now, especially, when
the competition for attention is so fierce, "knowing all our
customers" couldn't be more critical. These folks are unlikely to download
a bunch of different team apps - the incentives aren't great and the screen clutter on everyone's phone just
keeps growing so, for one-to-one communications, direct phone texts are
the best in-venue bet. But overall, don't look for the baseball experience to
get much better anytime soon.
Meantime,
in the rest of the world, we're already seeing a big change in the strike
count. Today, for most businesses, it's two strikes and you're
out. You get one chance to learn. Strike one. And you get one chance following
that lesson to make some quick course corrections. If you don't react, respond,
and rapidly change-- strike two, you're out. No one has the luxury of time any
longer and you can't wait for your people to eventually wake up and smell the
coffee. They need to get started right now. Instilling a sense of urgency,
showing them a path to success, and providing them with the tools and resources
needed to get the necessary work done is your most important job.
But
just talking about change without taking concrete actions is like wetting your
pants in a dark suit. It gives you a temporary warm feeling, but no one else
(hopefully) notices. Spoiler alert - forget the preceding passage if you
haven't already seen the new version of A Star is Born. Talking
about the same old stuff is also a formula for failure. The past prescriptions won't
provide rapid or certain relief any longer and certainly not the promised and
expected results of the past. Staying the course, sticking to your knitting,
and doing things the way you always have are just as likely to be problematic
strategies these days as productive ones.
You
can't hide from the future, you can't afford to stand still, and you can't save
your way to success. Gains secured by cost-cutting are short term salves at
best and more likely to further set you back than to be a means of setting you
up for the future. Growing your way out of your problems and fundamentally
transforming your organization into a digital-first juggernaut are the only
viable paths forward. Clinging to the past is a pyrrhic prescription for
constant pain, growing confusion, and eventual extinction. Learn from the past,
but don't live there.
The
very traditions that previously provided comfort, consistency, and
assured-if-modest results are now at best excuses to resist inevitable change.
Too many companies are working hard to catch up with their "glory
days" rather than focusing on what's ahead.
You
can't evolve your way into radical change. It's not a continuous or comfortable
process. Radical change demands a series of abrupt actions, hard decisions,
wrenching personnel changes, and painful compromises, which may or may not
eventually get you to where you hope you're headed. You've got to make the
critical changes happen because nothing very good ever happens by itself. And,
at least if you're taking action and happening to the world (as Springsteen
says) instead of letting the world hit you over the head, you're likely to
still be in the boat and in the race when the distant shore finally
appears.
This
trip will not be short or obvious or easy- there will be sacrifices galore--but
then again, there's not much of a choice or an option if you want your business
to thrive, and not just barely survive.
