fnord

Advanced Stats in Management

The concept of “Wins Above Replacement” exists in both basketball and baseball so-called advanced statistics. The meaning is very similar in both sports, but there is a subtle difference that got me thinking about how these stats would be applicable to managers (and really any kind of people who work as part of a team).

Baseball WAR/WARP

In baseball WAR/WARP is intended to measure the benefit a player brings to the team above a “replacement-level player: a player who may be added to the team for minimal cost and effort”. Of course, we all want to provide benefit to our team that is beyond “replacement-level”, but an interesting question is – what would be a “replacement-level manager”? What kind of manager “may be added to the team for minimal cost and effort”?

I submit that a replacement-level manager, going by the above definition, is a manager who follows all corporate policies to the letter; One who does as they are told, rarely refuses a request and performs exactly the amount of personal development required by HR. Such managers are very easy to come by – this is the default operating mode of anyone who was recently promoted to a management role and lacks confidence in their own abilities.

Thus the question: What do I, as a manager, bring to the team beyond doing as I'm told, distributing work to my team members and providing a semblance of personal development?

Basketball VORP/WAR

In basketball there are two different “above replacement” statistics, but they are both based on so-called box-score numbers – things like points scored, rebounds grabbed or shots blocked. Both VORP and WAR are based on formulas (BPM and RPM, respectively) that take all box-score numbers and outputs a single value intended to represent the value a player adds to the team in terms of additional points scored or wins obtained. Both formulas also define a “replacement-level” value and thus, naturally, a “value above replacement”.

So the question here is: What would be the “box-score” for a manager? And how would the different values be weighted to provide a single “above replacement” number?