Just how important is leadership within an organization? You can easily argue that leadership is needed from the very top to the very bottom. One person isn't going to make a team, but one person certainly can break a team. Leaders say and do what's right, even when it's hard or unpopular to do so. For these reasons and many more, we can conclude that organizational leadership is an extremely difficult thing to master, but a must-have if we want to be successful as a whole.

Organizational leadership, or the lack of it, is prevalent in many professional sports organizations. Only a select few organizations in the entire history of professional sports have traditionally been what we would consider a "model franchise" (see Yankees, Lakers, Patriots, to name a few). There is a lot that happens behind the scenes in modern professional sports that leads to disorder and chaos, but one constant always remains the same when it comes to decision making for anything from how on-the-field teams are assembled, to scheduling, to travel, to television rights - it's that money is king.  To be clear, sports organizations aren't the only culprits that put money before people. "The bottom line" is a very common phrase in the business and corporate world and is used to justify any decision that leaders and executives need to make in good times and in bad times. "The bottom line" conversation is a terribly sickening position that organizations put their hard working people in. I can say this because I spent 5+ years in Human Resource related roles. Credibility, yo.

Recently, an interesting situation arose between two organizations seeking two highly different outcomes. One organization tried to bully their way to a money grab, and another stood firm in their belief that people come before dollar signs.

Let's set the scene: The Bully - ESPN versus The People - The New York Yankees. Now, let's not get it twisted, Yankees Inc. - aka the Evil Empire, has done plenty of things in the past to take hard earned money right out the pockets of their fans. But ironically it was the Yankees organization that turned down a payday from ESPN and Sunday Night Baseball in an effort to keep their on-field product (the Yankee players) fresh and healthy. 

So what happened?

In early June ESPN decided to move an originally scheduled 1 PM game on July 8th between the Yankees and the Toronto Blue Jays to the Sunday Night slot as a way to draw viewers to their All-Star selection show that will precede whomever actually plays in that game. It should be noted that ESPN has had and still has full discretion to move teams to their prime time slot. However, the problem with this change in the Yankees schedule was, were they to play the 8 PM game, they would have then needed to travel from Toronto (presumably early in the morning) and get to Baltimore to play an already scheduled make-up doubleheader versus the Orioles on the 9th. That's THREE baseball games in less than 24 hours. In addition to that, the Yankees did not have a scheduled off-day until All-Star week on July 16th.

It was immediately clear that Yankees Manager, Aaron Boone, also an ex-ESPN broadcaster on Sunday Night, was less than pleased with his former employer's decision. Said Boone, "it is not good for the product on the field or the safety of our guys, having to go from night game, flight and right into a doubleheader."

Quite simply Boone is right. But that's not what ESPN prerogative was or is. They schedule games in an attempt to bring viewers to the television screen and money to their pockets. That's why most Sunday Night games feature the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Cardinals, Dodgers or Giants. Tradition equals values which equal dollars. Quite simply that's okay for ESPN too. I'm not here to say ESPN was wrong for wanting the Yankees to play the Sunday Night game. I am saying that it was wrong of them to try and force or bully the Yankees into playing already knowing of the doubleheader scheduled in Baltimore the next day. That's just lame.

After the schedule change, the Yankees threatened to boycott ESPN by withholding interviews with players for the rest of the season unless The Mothership relented. ESPN did relent and the Yankees won their mini-feud by taking a stand and saying that their people came before money.

This situation was a rare showing of cohesiveness in an organization from top-to-bottom. The words leaked out to the press came from Boone because of the drama between the ex-ESPNer and his current employer, but you can be sure that someone at the top had the back of the entire on-field product for the Yankees, if they didn't also have a hand in creating the drama themselves as a way to force ESPN to find another team to play on Sunday Night.

When you have a culture that everyone believes in you can win battles even against some of the mightiest opponents you will face. That's why having superior organizational leadership is vitally important to sustainable success in any business. In this scenario, two titans clashed, but the one that put common sense before money prevailed and gave us all a reminder that people, not money, should really be what we all consider "the bottom line".