Hi everybody - it’s Andrew Benedict-Nelson, your social impact advisor, back with another way to think differently about any problem you are working on. Subscribe if you’d love to receive an exercise like this every week.
These are the same kinds of exercises I use with clients as I help them realize social change — if that piques your interest, just hit reply and we can talk about it.
In 1899, the owners of the Cleveland Spiders baseball team purchased another franchise in St. Louis and transferred all their best players to the new team. As a result, the Spiders ended up with the worst record in major league history, 20-134, winning just 13 percent of their games. The 1899 season tested just how bad a team could be and still be allowed to play; numerous reforms that followed ensured that a franchise could not be hollowed out in the same way again.
Every industry has its own “Cleveland Spiders” story about someone who tried to run an institution on a shoestring budget or with minimal staff or with zero real leadership. These experiences are awful for those caught up in them, but they also teach us about the limits of a given category. To get started, pick your own “Cleveland Spiders” from the domain in which you work — the worst of the worst in some category. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an organization, but could instead be a time period, a set of practices, or even a whole profession.
What’s so unusual about your “Cleveland Spiders”? You may be able to find something objective like a win-loss record, but you can also use factors like reputation, turnover, or budgetary problems. What matters is whatever makes this thing or group stand out as extremely bad in your industry. How did everyone know it was so bad?
What specific events led to these terrible outcomes, and how were they perceived as they occurred? The Spiders story is interesting because in the early days of baseball, owners had unlimited power to reconfigure their teams as they saw fit. The Spiders’ fellow owners would not have objected to the transfer of players on principle; instead, it only became an issue when it affected other teams through outcomes like poor ticket sales. Take note of what social norms your own egregious example may have violated, but also which ones it doesn’t. What does that tell you about social norms that may affect the problem you’re working on?
Now it’s time to get philosophical for a minute. Were the Cleveland Spiders still a baseball team? Yes — it’s not as if they only put five people on the field or insisted on hitting the ball with wooden planks instead of bats. But the disregard for the players’ talent tested what it meant to be a professional baseball team in the early days of the sport. So when you look at your terrible example, does it somehow break the category it was supposed to be a part of? What does it teach you about how that category works? For example, if it’s the world’s worst hospital, what does it teach you about what it means to be a hospital in the first place?
Finally, look at your own “Cleveland Spiders” and pretend there is some secret from that story that is essentially to solving your most pressing problems. It might be as simple as the lesson everyone takes from a cautionary tale. But it might also be that your “Spiders” were on to something but did it in an unethical way or took it too far. In any case, ask yourself if there is some clue in the story that could make you see everything else differently.
That’s it! If you want to share any thoughts or feelings these questions evoked, just reply to this e-mail or comment below.
This exercise was developed using the configuration dynamic. It’s one of six innovation dynamics I use with clients to help realize new insights and unlock creative thinking.