Moneyball for Managers?

Managerial effectiveness is so darn qualitative. Shouldn’t we have comprehensive manager analytics? Moneyball for managers?

Imagine every email, meeting, phone call, with auto-created transcripts. Results against goals. Real-time feedback from everyone who interacts with that manager, like Bridgewater does. Frequent pulse surveys. Maps of a managers’ relationships and influence within the company, like Microsoft did with their email study.

Data scientists could use that data into meaningful metrics to gauge manager effectiveness, like baseball’s “Wins Above Replacement Player.”

Imagine the culture of rapid improvement this could foster:

• Managers would get daily reports on how they did against the metrics, like a stat sheet.
• Managers would get twice weekly calls with a coach. The coach could review “game film” — emails, recorded Zoom meetings — and tweaks the manager can make to improve.
• Promote/hire/fire decisions would use this data. Far less unconscious bias and guesswork.
• CEOs and boards would have much more accurate and real-time data on their manager talent. They would get benchmarks vs. other companies. They might need fewer layers of managers in between them and the first-level managers.

That’s moneyball for managers.

We have the technology. We have the data science. It would be a lot of hard work. What are we waiting for?