Why Alex Rodriguez’s Strategy Failed

Let’s evaluate Rodriguez ’s strategy and see if it makes sense. His mission was “to perform, and perform at a high level every day.” His vision was to deliver “the weight of the world” (due to his $252 million contract) which I translate into winning the World Series. His value network was the Texas Rangers and his fans. For better or worse, he had a strategy and in case you missed that announcement he admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs. Also the three years he used steroids, 2001 – 2003, he was with the Texas Rangers.

So while he was with the Texas Rangers, was he successful in executing his strategy? Let’s review…

His mission was to perform at a high level every day. In the three years he was with the Rangers, he played nearly every game and statistically was a top five player each year. In 2003 he won the American League Most Valuable Player. You cannot do much better than that, can you? Pretty successful, I think.

It starts to fall down from there. His vision was to win the World Series and that didn’t happen. His value network, the Texas Rangers, finished dead last. Actually, they finished dead last every year. Not much value to his network. As for his fans, I suspect he and the team had less in 2003 than in 2001 (due to the losing seasons and the subsequent trade to the Yankees).

I think Rodriguez’s intentions were well aligned and the amount of pressure he felt was no doubt enormous. At the end of the day he achieved his mission, but the vision and value were not delivered. Therefore, I think he failed to execute his strategy. (See side note #1.)

As Product Managers, it is important to demonstrate that the value your product is contributing is aligned with the value the organization is requiring. If not, then something needs correction.

What Rodriguez did right was align his strategy to the team’s strategy so that they were moving together towards the same vision. However, the value he provided did not translate into the value the team required. In the end, the team determined that Rodriguez was not helping the team succeed and after 3 years reset the 10 year plan by trading him for new players. (In 2004, the Rangers were moderately more successful.)

Side note #1: One could argue, I suppose, that the team’s failure was beyond his control. Maybe. One could argue that the team also was very profitable (were they?) over those three years and that Rodriguez contributed directly to that profit. With those thoughts, maybe it was all successful. You can debate that up with the owner, Tom Hicks. I am sticking with the idea that success is winning the World Series.

Side note #2: For the purposes of this post, the fact that Rodriguez used steroids is irrelevant but it should be noted that it didn’t help him or the team be successful. It should also be noted, that from a long-term perspective this will come back to haunt him achieve some personal goals. The lesson here is that as you develop a strategy it is best to not develop this strategy in isolation.

And I apologize for the baseball reference, but it has been a long winter and it beats another sock analogy.

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