Bob Behn’s Performance Leadership Report

An occasional (and maybe even insightful) examination of the issues, dilemmas, challenges, and opportunities for improving performance and producing real results in public agencies.

Vol. 8, No. 8, April 2010 On why, to produce significant results, public executives need to Copyright © 2010 by Robert D. Behn Combine Ted Williams’s Goals and Grit On next-to-the-last day of the World War II and the Korean War) as essential as talent to high accom- baseball season, Ted Williams had a stayed in the air. “You had to be an plishment.” batting average of .39955. That num- MIT graduate,” said pitcher Bob For example, West Point plebes ber is off the charts. Any major league Lemon, “to know what the hell he was who score high on the grit scale are baseball player who has a batting talking about.” more likely to survive Beast Barracks. average above .300—that’s three hits But above all, Williams had grit. In Moreover, this measure of grit is a for every ten chances—is a very good pursuit of his goal—to become base- better predictor than the summary hitter. Over an entire season, for ball’s greatest hitter—he was indefati- measure created by the Academy’s every ten chances, Williams was get- gable, both intellectually and physi- admissions committee. ting nearly—but not quite—four hits. cally. From their research, Duckworth Still, .39955 does round off to .400. "Ballplayers are not born great,” and her colleagues conclude that the So, to preserve a very impressive .400 Williams argued when he was in- same applies to teachers and stu- average, Williams could have simply ducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. dents. Novice teachers who measured not played on the season’s last day. “They're not born great hitters or higher on grit produced higher aca- Not Williams. He played. On that pitchers or managers. And luck isn't demic gains in their students. Grittier Sunday afternoon, in four at bats, the big factor. No one has come up undergraduates earned better grades. Williams had four hits. His average with a substitute for hard work. I've And adults with more grit finished was now a nice, comfortable .4048. never met a great player who didn't more years of education. But the team had another game to have to work harder at learning to To Duckworth’s research group, play. Again, to preserve his .400 sea- play ball than anything else he ever grit means “working strenuously to- son, Williams could have sat it out. did." Indeed, Williams always worked ward challenges, maintaining effort Not Williams. He played the second hard. and interest over years despite fail- game, too. Going two for four, Wil- ure, adversity, and plateaus in prog- liams ended the season with a batting ress.” Moreover, Duckworth’s re- average of .406. Effective leaders, report Angela search “suggests that one personal That was in 1941. In over half a Duckworth and her colleagues, quality is shared by the most promi- century since, no major-league base- share a “perseverance and pas- nent leaders in every field.” That qual- ball player (not even a steroid imbib- sion for long-term goals.” To im- ity is “grit.” er) has hit .400 for an entire season. prove performance, public execu- Yes, to improve an agency’s perfor- Ted Williams was a man with a tives need this same kind of mance, public executives need talent. purpose. “A man has to have goals consistent and durable effort. But they also need grit. “Achievement —for a day, for a lifetime,” said Wil- Like Ted Williams, they need grit. is the product of talent and effort,” liams. And his was “to have people writes Duckworth, and this effort say, ‘ There goes Ted Williams, the must be more than short bursts of greatest hitter who ever lived.’ ” In the final at bat of his career, intensity. The “consistency and dura- Williams, of course, had several Williams hit a home run. John tion” of this effort is essential. valuable assets. He had superb eye- Updike wrote a now-classic article in As Peter Drucker once observed, sight and excellent hand-eye coordi- The New Yorker about that game: “whenever anything is being accom- nation. And he was intelligent too. He “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.” In it plished, it is being done, I have was always studying pitchers and Updike described Williams as “the learned, by a monomaniac with a pitching. classic ballplayer of the game on a hot mission.” Williams determined that a pitch- August weekday, before a small From 1939 through 1961, the left er’s fastball came in at an angle of 4.5 crowd, when the only thing at stake is fielder for the Boston Red Sox was a to 5 degrees to the horizontal, while the tissue-thin difference between a monomaniac with a mission. His for a curveball the angle was between thing done well and a thing done ill.” name was Ted Williams. d 10 and 15 degrees. Thus, he con- Yes, Williams’s intelligence and cluded that his swing should have a natural ability were important. Equal- Robert D. Behn is a lecturer at Har- slight uppercut, thus creating a larger ly so were his goals and his grit. vard University's John F. Kennedy “impact zone,” the time during which Angela Duckworth, of the Univer- School of Government where he his bat had contact with the ball. sity of Pennsylvania’s Department of chairs the executive-education pro- Moreover, he understood Bernoul- Psychology, defines “grit” as the “per- gram “Driving Government Perfor- li’s principle of fluid dynamics that severance and passion for long-term mance: Leadership Strategies that explained why curve balls curved and goals.” Moreover, she and her col- Produce Results.” His publications why airplanes (like the ones he flew in leagues have found that “grit may be include: Performance Leadership: 11 Better Practices That Can Ratchet Up To subscribe go to http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/TheBehnReport. It’s free! Performance.