Swayless Leadership

I loved the book Moneyball, which details the way Billy Beane (General Manager of the Oakland A’s) leads his team. One of the most interesting points is that Beane refuses to watch his team play. The reason is he doesn’t want his emotions swayed. If he sees a player hit a monster home run, or make a diving catch, it would be easy for him to overrate the player because of his memory of that one play. And so he only looks at the stats, and makes all his decisions based on them.

So if you’re in leadership … what can you learn from his example? Where might you be swayed and making decisions based on emotions rather than reality? And what are the cold hard stats you can examine to get a better view of what’s really going on?