One of the object lessons of business school is that standing still is rarely an option. With shareholders to please and customers to serve, companies simply can’t afford to relax even after a great year. There’s always someone trying to knock you off your perch. These competitive pressures mandate a near constant reassessment of every aspect of your operations. Continuous improvement may be consultant-speak, but its underlying message is sound.
So too is it in professional sports, as big a business as most anything else. Fans serve the dual role of shareholder and customer and their expectations never change. They too want a solid return on the time and money invested. They want a championship now and they’re tired of waiting. And even if you just won one championship the next loss is so much an issue of what have you done for me lately? If you own or run a professional sports team and really crave success then you can’t just stay static either. With so many moving parts around you, staying still is really moving backward.
The Indians playoff experience last season was in many ways like the Browns playoff near miss. Both raised reasonable expectations that both teams were about success and were just about there. But where Shapiro got complacent, Savage got hungry.
That doesn’t mean that all of Shapiro’s decisions have been wrong or that Savage’s moves have been all right. In fact, both have a healthy dose of hits and misses over the years. But when it was most necessary to begin the really hard work of stepping up or stepping aside, the edge certainly goes to Savage. Whether that will yield different results is up for grabs. But if it doesn’t Cleveland fans will be even more apoplectic then usual for there is nothing worse than not knowing where to turn next.
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