John Mahaffie

Fear the old, not the new

February 18, 2025August 6, 2008 by John B. Mahaffie

Guilty as charged! Even futurists can fall into the trap of denying the forces of change, wishing they didn’t exist. What happened to me is that I caught myself being unwilling to look at how a system is changing because I didn’t want it to change.

I am a big fan of baseball, and spend a lot of time helping my local Little League. I’ve read deep into the history of the game-it’s well over 150 years old, and I’ve steeped myself in the traditions of the game. One of baseball’s qualities, and one that is important to many of its fans, is how little it has changed over the decades. Valid or not, students of the game compare statistics from today’s players to those from decades ago. We assume continuity, and even that there has not been significant change to the key things that shape the game.

So a few months ago, an Association for Professional Futurists member passed along a journalist’s request for ideas on the future of baseball. I knew I could and should answer, and some of my colleagues told me they were sure they would see my ideas enter the mix on the Association’s listserve. I stayed silent.

I realized a little later that I clammed up because I do not want the game to change. That’s an awfully dangerous frame of mind for a futurist. But I am glad I recognized what was happening to me. It’s a danger we all face. Most importantly, it puts us in a purely defensive position when we have the chance to shape change. Instead of positive ideas for change, we’re likely to resist, cast doubt, and work against change. That usually doesn’t work, and we lose the chance to be part of shaping our future.

Fearing change

It’s normal and natural to be cautious or fearful about change. So we often fear the new. But often it’s the old that will get us. Old views, old ways, old systems, old attitudes can be dangerous.

A big part of improving foresight is helping ourselves and others get unstuck, change our mental models and points of view, and changing the language with which we speak about the world. In business fearing change can be about holding on to the big legacy of sunk investments and to deep-rooted practices that probably have to change.

The culture of a business is not what’s rigid, necessarily, it’s the practices-the ways that culture is manifested and carried out that are. Learning to get unstuck means recognizing those things, and being willing to confront them. A good foresight culture makes doing that a part of its culture.

Image: Boston Public Library

As long as you do what’s conventional, you won’t be accused of a blunder

February 18, 2025June 4, 2008 by John B. Mahaffie

A lot my after-hours life is centered on baseball this time of year, so allow me to look for a strong lesson for the business world from my favorite sport.

Baseball today is much the same game that was played over 100 years ago. It has deeply-rooted conventions and established ways of doing things. [link] And it’s slow to change. There are tremendous pressures not to break the bounds of common practice in baseball. A ruled error for a player in baseball means not achieving something that, conventionally played, should have been doable. In fact, sometimes a fielder who misses a ball gets no error because he doesn’t try to make a tough play.

As baseball stats guru Bill James has noted, “A blunder by a manager is a move that is A) unconventional, B) doesn’t work and C) occurs at a moment of focus in the game. If you put those three things together, you have a blunder. As long as you do what’s conventional, you won’t be accused of a blunder.”

The disincentive to innovation in baseball, like in so many areas of life, is powerful. That means a lot of potentially-successful and innovative approaches to the game will not even get a tryout.

For example, conventional practice has the best pitchers go in as starting pitchers, at the beginning of the game. Late game, a series of relievers come in to finish the pitching. Some innovative thinkers in baseball management would love to try starting the aces in the third or fourth inning, using the one-inning talent first. The potential in that is great for having the best arms hold on to a win or help the team come from behind. But starting the aces late would be odd and unconventional, and no one wants to try it (and fail).

The few baseball managers who show a tendency to “think outside the box” are the exceptions that prove the rule. For example, in April 2008, Bobby Cox, the Atlanta Braves manager, temporarily moved his pitcher to left field so he could bring him back to the mound later. The Braves lost, but fortunately Bobby Cox has the status in baseball to avoid his unconventional move being seen as a terrible blunder. Still, the baseball bloggers and other commentators reacted as if a crazy-like-a-fox manager had done something truly odd. But what he did was logical, legal, sensible, and could have worked.

We need the leaders in organizations to feel empowered to buck convention, to try new things, and to fail sometimes. Baseball managers, with their ancient game of traditions, are starting to wake up to new ideas. Are business people caught in their old trap of sticking to convention?

Many are. We need to do some careful reflection on how much that’s true and get conversations going about it. If more people are aware of how traditions and conventions in their game might be inhibiting them, we’ll have a clearer shot at making the changes that need making, and maybe we can win more games.

Image: bobbychuck24 via Flickr, cc license

Taking a lesson from baseball coaching

February 18, 2025December 4, 2007 by John B. Mahaffie

Jeff McKay is a remarkable baseball coach who trains not just players, but als o coaches. Jeff helps ball players by showing them how to be more aware of what they are doing.

Here’s an example of Jeff’s approach: Ricky is a baseball player and a great athlete. He is a power hitter—he hits a lot of home runs, but more often he strikes out.

In talking to Ricky, Jeff got him to realize that he’s impatient—he just wants to get a hit! He’ll swing at anything that comes in his direction. So Jeff simulated pitches in all possible places and got Ricky to think about just how far outside the strike zone he will swing. Part of that range, Ricky realized, was just too far out—he was unlikely to ever get a good hit.

Now, with a sharper awareness of his batting habits, Ricky can think about narrowing the range of pitches he’ll swing at, just a little. With that new awareness, Ricky will almost certainly hit the ball more often and strike out less.

You can get an organizational group to do something similar. For example, you can get people talking about the company’s tendencies to think certain ways. You can draw diagrams with your team of the company’s universe and what is inside in or outside it. Is that company strike zone too small?

You can build from that to an understanding of what the boundaries are on the group’s thinking—what topics do people talk about? What futures are they willing to imagine? Is that range sensible? Is the thinking too narrow? Are there official or strongly-felt boundaries on the team’s thinking?

Unlike Ricky—with a too-large strike zone, many organizations focus too narrowly—they need to be more aware of how they may swing at too few pitches because the organization’s thinking is too narrow.

You can play the coach’s role and help people focus on how the organization responds to change—what are its’ habits, good and bad. Somewhere in the range of possibility, the organization might learn better what pitches to swing at, and which ones to leave alone. As coach you can stop the action for a moment, and get people to reflect. Ask: What did we just do? Did we just dismiss that idea too abruptly? Why?

The key is to make people more aware of what they do, to get it out in the open, and be sure that those ways of thinking are the best fit for the organization as it faces the future.