Articles around business and people management are replete with sporting analogies.  Please excuse me while I find space for one more.

In Major League Baseball, every team plays 162 games in the regular season (yes, that’s 162).  At the end of the regular season, the playoffs occur with two guaranteed positions for the top two division winners in their league, with the remaining two positions determined through a four-team wild card series.

This year, while all other teams had completed their regular season, two teams (the Mets and Braves) had two washout games to play against each other in a double-header.  While that’s not particularly interesting in itself, it is noteworthy because the outcome of both those games would determine the final two wild card positions.  For me, it was particularly important as my team (the Diamondbacks) were in the powerless position of being in place to clinch one of the two final wild card positions, provided that either the Mets or the Braves won both of their washout games.  If that occurred, the Diamondbacks and the winner of both washout games would secure the last two wild card positions.  Conversely, if the Mets and Braves won one game each, they would each secure a wild card spot, and the Diamondbacks would miss out.

At this point, cynicism and conspiracies start to take root based on team lines.  With the emotion stripped out, there’s also a clear space to analyse the situation through a game theory lens.  In practice, everyone knew the outcome – whoever won game one would almost certainly lose game two, if for no other reason than they’d want to save their better pitchers for the wild card games.  As you can guess, the Diamondbacks missed out.  I guess there’s always 2025.

So how is this relevant to people management?  Put simply, every game counts and you rarely know what games are ultimately going to be difference between making it to the playoffs or not.  When we manage people, every interaction counts.  What we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how we’re doing it – it all counts, and we never really know when a seemingly unimportant but suboptimal interaction is going to result in a significant downstream outcome.  Whether it’s a team member who’s underperforming, two team members who aren’t getting along, or an allegation of bullying, as people managers we often look to analyse those situations after the event in terms of specific interactions – “I had made it clear to them what I expected”; “I’ve told them they need to put their differences aside and focus on the job”; “They’re not performing, and I was discussing that with them.”  What we often overlook is that while those interactions (games) counted, so did the rest.

The challenges we end up managing with our people rarely occur only because of a single interaction (game).  A single incident might be a catalyst, but it’s rarely the sole cause.  Instead, they typically arise from the cumulative effects of all the interactions (games) that have occurred up to that point, and irrespective of whether the interaction (game) was against us, or someone else (another team).

Just like sporting teams, as managers we have our good days and our not-so-good days.  We might be carrying an injury.  We might be fatigued.  We may have celebrated yesterday’s win a little too hard.  We might have misread the play.  These are all explanations for why we lost today, but they don’t change the outcome, or the cumulative effect.  We all want to be judged by our best games, but it’s the ones we lose that have the biggest impact.

For the Diamondbacks, if they had won one more / lost one less game in the regular season, they would not have left their fate in the hands of two other teams.  As managers, we need to make sure we don’t do the same.