Cubs Fans' Leadership Secrets: Learning to Win From a "Cursed" Team's Errors

The authors of this book take a hard swing at leadership from a truly unique perspective—a century of suffering and failure as die-hard fans of the Chicago Cubs baseball team. Our mothers always told us, “Don’t wind up like that kid!” and they were right. Every leader can benefit from this study of the Cubs’ superabundance of bad examples. After all, shouldn’t some consolation prize be bundled with all that heartbreak?
While dozens of other books approach leadership from the obvious and well-worn path of lessons derived from great and successful leaders, Cubs Fans’ Leadership Secrets proves that people learn the most from mistakes, not triumphs. You don’t run into a George Washington or Abraham Lincoln too often, but all of us can see something of ourselves in the Cubs’ struggles to get the most out of ordinary gifts.
There is no richer treasure trove of mistakes than the Cubs, who in 2008 “celebrated” 100 consecutive years without a World Series championship. It took a lot of errors to amass that unparalleled record of futility, a bumper crop of bad choices and failed experiments for leaders to learn from.
Leadership expert and bestselling author Kenneth Blanchard has contributed the foreword to Cubs Fans’ Leadership Secrets and he knows that all leaders can gain valuable leadership insights by studying how the Cubs have gone so wrong for so long in so many ways.
Cubs teams have often focused on one or two star performers, to the detriment of the team’s overall performance. Stars have often been selfish and devoted to their own success, and the leaders have tolerated this. The book shows how to recognize the dangers in this situation within any organization and apply the correct antidote.
The Cubs have lost championships by failing to pay attention to the matters at hand and taking for granted the continuation of their current successful position. As a result, they have suffered notable collapses at a late stage. Cubs Fans’ Leadership Secrets helps leaders to balance proactive planning with active engagement in the tasks at hand.
Cubs teams have “choked” in the clutch because they had not done the groundwork to become immune to pressure. If leaders fail to think about and prepare for emergencies, their organizations become very vulnerable to panic and disaster when crises do materialize. The book introduces a new concept, the Coefficient of Panic Vulnerability, and explains how leaders can influence it positively.
The Cubs traded away young future Hall of Famer Lou Brock in a misguided and shortsighted episode of leadership ineptitude that haunted them for many years. Often, teams do not recognize diamonds in the rough when they are right among them. This book demonstrates how to develop effective programs to identify and nurture future top performers in any line of work.
One reason for the Cubs’ century-long championship drought is failure to devote adequate resources to identifying, attracting, training, and retaining top quality young talent. They have foolishly failed to plant and nurture the seeds of their own success in their “farm system.” Cubs Fans’ Leadership Secrets illustrates that a leader in any organization must obey the law of the harvest and focus on developing the next generation of team members.
The book introduces the idea of a Quotient of Impatience (Q.I.), a conceptual framework a leader can use to balance the key variables relevant to any effective employee-development system. A leader who is aware of Q.I. as a basic analytical concept will be better able to conduct productive internal assessments and make the changes needed to optimize his or her talent development network.
Organizations can become comfortable with failure, with losing ingrained in their culture. This systemic sickness is simultaneously one of the results of prolonged failure, and also fosters repetition of those unsatisfactory outcomes. Cubs Fans’ Leadership Secrets explains that the proper response to failure includes an attitude that losing is not a permanent condition and that we have the power to reverse any curse.
Winning teams don’t tolerate blaming other people, or “curses,” or any outside factors for their own mistakes, whether individually or collectively. They own their negative experiences and learn from them. This book explores and provides a solution to the Cubs’ long history of blaming their losses on billy-goat curses, black-cat bad luck, bad umpires, poor weather, their teammates, and everyone but themselves.
Leaders ensure failure when they refuse to take a hard look at themselves. There are many common Achilles’ heels that cause leaders and their organizations to stumble, but they can only be corrected if they are first noticed and acknowledged as areas needing work. This self-assessment is not always a pleasant process, but it is essential, and Cubs Fans’ Leadership Secrets explains how to do it.