The World Series Fallacy

I would often have to fight the “World Series Fallacy,” which is that a strategy fails if it doesn’t help you win the top honor. A new coaching strategy is useless unless you win a Gold medal at the Olympics or the Super Bowl. We can think of other fallacies. You are a failure unless you are as big as Google, or you get elected President, or publish in the #1 journal, or so forth. The point is that good management is often about shifting the average performance, not getting all the variance. Not winning the World Series is besides the point.

Fabio Rojas: "Moneyball: An Orgtheory Review"