Let’s be honest, some organizations have absolutely no idea what they are doing. A friend of mine named Al Clifford played for a baseball team whose problems strongly resemble those of your average corporation. In order to protect the team’s identity, I’ll call them the Maitland Vulture Claws. It is frustrating to hear Al talk about how the team is run, and I’m just glad that I don’t have to put up with an organization like this.
The Maitland Vulture Claws are a subsidiary of a cricket team called the Maryland Isotopes. The cricket team is based in Maryland, saw baseball as a similar game, and planted the baseball team’s headquarters in Florida (Maitland) since baseball is played there year-round. While synergies exist between the two sports, cricket and baseball are quite different. Unfortunately for the Vulture Claws organization, most of its upper management hails from the cricket world and maintain the idea that the two are the same and can be run in a similar fashion. When baseball was at its peak (during the “steroid era”), the Maitland Vulture Claws decided to build and build, expanding its stadium to hold an unbelievable number of guests beyond what many knew the demand required. This strategy quite obviously proved short-sighted, however, since the stadium is now a heap of unused seats and excess inventory. Moreover, the ancillary outlets on-site—snack shacks, merchandise stores, etc—are running at huge losses because not enough visitors come through the doors or care to spend money in addition to the ticket price if they do.
To complicate manners, the Maryland Isotopes recently bought a high-end cricket team in another league in Maryland called the Rockford Cartographers. Seeing the success of the Vulture Claws in their heyday, the Cartographers pushed for its own baseball team and also put it in Florida, right down the west coast of the state, calling it the Riviera Coast Clubbers. As the Rockford and Riviera Coast teams are much more high-end, the required levels of service are much higher and employees are paid a premium. The Riviera Coast Clubbers expanded its stadium as well during the “steroid era” and are left in even worse shape in a poor economy because no one cares to spend the ungodly amount of money charged for ticket packages or concessions on-site.
As if the operations of each of these organizations weren’t jacked-up enough, the ticket sales department is just as bad, if not worse. While logically the sales team should be selling season-ticket packages while appealing to customers’ emotions (since there is no financial return on this kind of purchase), they have instead chosen to market the stadiums themselves. The stadiums have become the selling point—not the games. The sales team has also largely focused on selling to existing season-ticket holders rather than trying to bring in new customers, a strategy that makes no sense since that’s not actually considered growth! Furthermore, season-tickets are not for everyone, yet the sales team pressures customers into purchasing by using up-front discounts. When the early-stage benefit runs out, these customers have realized they cannot afford the package and default on their payment.
Tough economic times have forced both the Vulture Claws and the Clubbers to go through an organizational restructuring, and poor Al was let go. If the organizations were performing so badly, you’d think the President, CEO, COO, or even GM would be fired, correct? Instead, they have chosen to cut the players on the field, opting to play without a catcher and an entire outfield! They’ve even taken some of the players out of the field and moved them to managerial roles thinking that more chiefs and less Indians will solve the problem. Meanwhile, the team only sends 5 players to bat in the lineup, rolls the dice on defense, and fails to address the question of where all that work will go. Releasing all these players will reduce the teams’ salary expenses in the next quarter and they can avoid paying severance to high-paid 20-year management veterans, but the underlying problems remain.
Al couldn’t be happier to be out of that organization, and I couldn’t be happier for him. He’s going to move on and never look back while using that experience to help educate his future teams on what NOT to do. If you’re in a similar situation as Al, hang in there but look for alternative opportunities. Those organizations have it coming to them—and if you’re still around then you might end up as the shit in the proverbial fan.
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