Billys Method of Accomplishing His Goals in the Movie Money Ball - Essay Example

Organizational Behavior in Competition Introduction Organizational behavior is the field that looks at and investigates the influence and impact of individuals and structures have behavior within an organization. Understanding organizational is integral to the organizational leader and understanding how different people work differently in various organizational circumstances. It helps to understand and predict the behavior of such different people. Organizational behavior is important in fostering and maintaining cordial organizational relationships. It helps in improving relations between management and the employees. Furthermore, it is important in helping the leader of the organization understand what motivates his or her employees to work in certain ways. Understanding the basis of motivation leads to the management getting things done easily and through delegation of duties. Also, understanding organizational behavior is imperative in the sense that it helps in understanding organizational life. The different people and workers who encompass the important organization. It helps in understanding them and how they relate within the organization to ensure peaceful and meaningful coexistence. The following essay describes the method Billy uses to accomplish his goals in the movie Money Ball while including the theories and concepts of organizational behavior. Finally, the essay uses a problem and solution approach in Billy’s philosophy to argue or offer support to the points. Understanding organizational behavior is an important aspect in any aspirational leader as the essay will clearly highlight. Billy’s Method of accomplishing his goals Billy uses a method that is unique in the accomplishment of his intended goals and the goals of his baseball team. His method recognizes that his team does not have the financial muscle and might to compete with the big financially well off teams. Despite that fact, Billy uses a new method to study players who have been overlooked and unappreciated due to varying degrees of problems among others. The inability of the Billy’s Oakland Athletics team to acquire talent through their financial might forces him down through using other methods in acquiring the necessary talents. Billy uses a new method based on statistical analysis of players. The method was new and unheard of in the Baseball game which was started by the man Billy recruited from a meeting. The research and analytics based method helped the team to identify undervalued players from the competitive major league baseball talent pool. Using this approach the team can reach the playoffs for a period of three consecutive years. Billy’s method had various principles in play with the research and statistical approach. Some among them include. The ability to pay attention. In his meeting in Cleveland, Billy notices that the real brains in the meeting was a little employee without the trappings of traditional leadership. The little employee, Peter brand was the one who had the most important position of being the one who was most informed in the meeting. The key principle is the fact that Billy pays attention to notice the key drivers of decisions in the organization. The key person never had a good title or the better position. Such people are usually overlooked due to such inadequacies. Furthermore, Billy shows that the top people are not always the ones with the best decisions. Paying attention is imperative. Billy uses the important organizational behavior notion of understanding the value and importance of individuals (Coghlan and Brannick 71). He understands that Peter with his deep sea of knowledge is and will be valuable and insightful to the accomplishment of Billy’s goal. His importance is in invaluable to Billy’s team that has no financial might, but rather which has to devise new methods and approaches in order to achieve their results. The importance of Peter’s knowledge is also highlighted with the organizational behavior concept of enhancing leadership and decision making. The introduction of new methods of using research and analysis helps in decision making because, through good information, Billy can make good decisions. Therefore, accomplishing his goal. The skill to know when someone or an employee has value to the organization but in a different role. Billy talks to Hatterberg about the possibility of him joining the team as the first basement he fully understood the value that Hatterberg would bring to the team. Billy understands that the value he brings to the team is not the traditional and the historic one Hatterberg usually had in the historic days. The method shows Billy’s ability to see the potential that he notices as a leader. He is not blindsided to the historical held views and notions about people. The true attributes of understanding the roles and values of others that they can bring to an organization albeit in a different role. Seeing and understanding the potential opportunities in others. Billy understands the different roles that individuals bring to the table, and he utilizes it through the use of the analyses system. The research and analyses approach enables Billy to understand the individual skills and talents and how it may relate to those of other team members. He questions Hatterberg ability not based on his experience and historical basis, but what he may offer to the team. He disregards what has been for what could be. A true concept in understanding organizational behavior (Robbins and Judge 39). Furthermore, the other concept of an employee is better working together in a team as opposed to working individually. Another method Billy uses is breaking down his expectations into small and meaningful steps. These achievable, meaningful and small steps are crucial to the method used by his team in reaching the playoff. For example, he chose to focus on keeping the traffic flowing through hitting singles or taking walks by achieving mini-goals. Through these measures, the self-confidence of the team increases while becoming more and effective at their professional baseball games. After a while, Billy starts setting high bars. After the team had started racking up a series of wins and moving on to a playoff. Billy instils the feeling that they need the series in order to be considered as having changed the game. As a leader, Billy recognizes the full potential of his team and continues setting high standards that they need to achieve. He pushes the team harder and further towards accomplishing his goals and targets. The real leadership skills seen in Billy’s method and approach is setting the goals into meaningful and achievable steps while having a bigger picture in mind. An invaluable insight and good organizational leadership that offers understanding to organizational behavior. Breaking the goals into meaningful and achievable steps enables them to build their confidence. Building confidence enables the team to accomplish tasks. Accomplishing tasks leads to happy team players. It led the Oakland A’s baseball players to enhance productivity. Billy understands the theory that happy team players full of confidence leads to increased productivity. Increased productivity led to a winning streak for the team. For example, Billy, after a succession of defeats, he decides to trade some players. He trades them with the hopes that it will motivate other players into understanding that their positions are not tenable, untouched. Furthermore, for he notices that the same effect is not having the same effect with David. He advises him to figure out what he wants out of the relationship. He advices and tells him that he is not paying him for a player that he used to be in the past but for a player that he is right now. Becoming a leader for the other players. He encompasses the other organizational behavior concept of defining the goals that he wants the team to achieve, developing an overall strategy and laying out a comprehensive list of plans. Billy honestly engages the abilities of Davis Justice. At 37 years, David Justice is the eldest of the Baseball players under Billy, who was seen to be past his best and out of the major league. Billy honestly engages him in a frank conversation asking him to take the leadership role of the team and influence matters positively. Billy understands his the experience that has shaped David Justice and hopes he can use that experience to encourage other players to play positively and to play to win. The organizational behavior concept of understanding, predicting and influencing the actions and behavior is clearly highly brought out in this situation (Fishbein and Icek 7). The importance is highlighted because, after the frank conversation, the Oakland Athletics went on a winning streak that set a World Series milestone. Organizational leaders need careful to choose those who influence others in a manner that is geared towards achieving what the organization wants. Leadership is key for the organizational behavior concept. Billy enables David justice to model the way because of his past knowledge. Showing him that he can use that knowledge to influence and model the younger players in the team causing him to assume greater leadership responsibilities without giving him any official title or rank. Using the experience of the most experienced person in the room has the benefit of motivating those without that experience into believing and performing better (Robbins and Judge 21). Billy uses an out of the box method, research and player analyses to challenge an institutional way of thinking. The method and approach exemplifies a concept of organizational behavior that forces every team member and employee to think outside of the box. The resulting outcome is the fact that the team can shrug off its losing streak and pick up one of the longest winning streaks in the history of the game. Changing the game as he claims. The concept of challenging institutionally held notions in order to achieve the success and objectives demanded is highlighted in this case. Furthermore, through the process we can see that fact there are numerous ways through which we can accomplish a task. Another approach Billy uses in accomplishing his goals is through the breaking and elimination of dead wood from the team. Individuals who may be a stumbling block that prevents the team from achieving its main objectives and vision. The organizational concept of perception is in action in this case. Different people perceived things differently ending up in road blocks towards succeeding and achieving the set objectives. Billy clearly ran into this kind of situation with the head of scouting. Billy in breaking the connection with the head of scouting hires a non-experience individual to head that role. He sees the end of the previous connection as a real and necessary step in breaking the team staff members from relying too much on history instead of looking to the opportunities offered by the present and the future. Through such actions, Billy tries to get the other members of staff into understanding his expectations of both the team and the staff themselves. The rationale of using this method, the philosophy behind it is because if he did not remove the head scout from the position. The disagreements would have continued to the detriment of team morale. Low team morale would have resulted in the team not performing better. The losing streak would have continued. Therefore, in understanding the concepts of group dynamics in organizational, we understand the importance of the entire team being in a positive and non-distractive mood. Therefore, the team can achieve all it could, productively and effectively. Conclusion Billy’s has success in using the aspects of understanding the Peter Brand method of research and player analysis. He brings success to the team in what is perhaps a historical accomplishment. Billy employs the approaches of paying attention to the people around him and understanding the fact that it is not necessarily the people with the title who have the information. Secondly, he understood the value each member of the team brought to the team even in a different role as opposed to what they are used to before. He understood the need to part ways with those who may be problematic to the vision and organization of the team in terms of achieving its goals. He enlisted the help of those who have the experience enabling them to have an influence and the leadership mantle to lead. Finally, he set high standards for his players to match. The above essay clearly shows how he managed to achieve most of his goals and how he did that. Furthermore, the concepts and theories of organizational behavior have been incorporated together with the philosophies of Billy to either support or argue against his notions. Works Cited Alvesson, Mats. Understanding organizational culture. London: Sage, 2011. Print Coghlan, David and Teresa Brannick. Doing action research in your own organization. London: Sage, 2014. Print Fishbein, Martin and Ajzen Icek. Predicting and changing behavior: The reasoned action approach. Washington, D.C: Taylor & Francis, 2011. Print Robbins, Stephen P and Timothy A Judge. Organizational Behavior 15th Edition. New York: Prentice Hall, 2012. Print Read More