I want to continue on in my series of posts here with another baseball inspired post. It is the sport of my youth so I just can’t stay away from it for too long.
Last week Buster Olney, ESPN baseball guru, tweeted out a statement to the effect that “There is no perfect defensive efficiency statistic in baseball right now.” He cited an example of my Chicago Cubs. He wrote that based on the most widely used defensive statistic now, that the fourth rated defensive outfielder is Alfonso Soriano. Say What???!!!!
Stats lie. And this one tells a whopper!
For context for non-baseball folk. Soriano is BRUTAL as a left fielder. He had a cannon for an arm, but the rest of the time it’s like watching a little leaguer try to make plays. He was a second baseman for a long time. But he was horrible and was an error machine. The Cubs paid him the worst contract ever and he’s been in left field for the last five years with the Cubs. He merits his own bloopers special. This gives rise to what I am going to call “The Soriano Effect.”
“The Soriano Effect” is when you are so bad at defense, that you don’t even end up in a position to make a lot of the same mistakes others make because you don’t even have the capacity to get there in the first place. So your numbers look good, but only because you weren’t good enough to have a chance to make a mistake.
“The Soriano Effect” is at work in ministries and organizations. It happens when leaders take comfort in some measurement or statistic, yet a closer examination might reveal that the number really reveals a total lack of capacity in some other crucial area.
Take someone who is looking at their financial stewardship. They look at their savings and feel awesome and they feel real good about their financial stewardship and responsibility. But a closer look reveals perhaps that they don’t give or donate money anywhere. So at what first glance is financial responsibility, is actually hoarding and selfishness. The success in one measurement was produced by a total lack of capacity in another area.
In my organization, some of the numbers of new staff to one of the ethnic-specific organizations has been celebrated (and rightfully so) as the most sent into this ministry ever. However, all of them are serving cross-culturally and none have been from the ethnic context itself. It’s still worth celebrating, but it reveals that there still is a tremendous lack of organizational capacity to see folks from this ethnic background join our staff. The success of one statistic hides the weakness or lack of capacity in another crucial area. The potential danger is that the conversations would be directed by the celebrated stat and the needed conversations to build capacity in the other areas wouldn’t happen. (This isn’t being critical, just illustrating the process. We have to celebrate, learn, and change all at the same time. Sometimes stats lure us into premature or naive celebration.)
And say you’re running a website with a blog. You get really excited by the number of hits you have over its first couple of months and you only look at that one statistic. You feel good about yourself. But then you find out the real story is that it’s your mom and other family members repeatedly reading everything. You have maybe a lot of hits, but the range and network of influence is exposed as being really narrow. “The Soriano Effect.”
So as you think deeper about measurements and statistics you might use, what areas or capacities might be getting “covered up?” Do your numbers have the equivalent to a “photographic negative” that reveals a lack of capacity in some area?
The “Soriano Effect” can be great for rationalization and justification, but it doesn’t pass the eye test (or smell test if you prefer) for those that know what to look for.
Where are you seeing “The Soriano Effect”?
How do you guard against statistical deception when it is driven by an obvious lack of capacity in some other area of significance?
