“There are rich teams, and there are poor teams. Then there’s 50 feet of crap. And then there’s us.”

– Brad Pitt, as Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, in “Moneyball”

All compliance professionals, even those who have never even seen a baseball game, can learn something from the 2011 Brad Pitt film “Moneyball”—the true story about how in 2002 the struggling Oakland Athletics team made more with less. And won. A lot.

You have to actually see the movie or, even better, read the book on which it was based, “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game,” by Michael Lewis, for a full appreciation of how general manager Billy Beane challenged the conventional baseball wisdom, using Bill James’ theory of “sabermetrics” to build his team on a relatively shoestring budget. Using James’ singular focus on objective metrics that matter (instead of more subjective or distracting criteria “he throws funny” or “he’s got an ugly girlfriend”), Beane made astounding use of the team’s limited financial assets to achieve a record-breaking American League winning streak of 20 in a row in the 2002 season.

* * *

Notably, Moneyball Compliance has been embraced by no less than the U.S. Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission, which have specifically cautioned companies against a one-size-fits-all due diligence program as “generally ill-conceived and ineffective” [PDF] because resources inevitably are spread too thin, with too much focus on low-risk markets and transactions (e.g., modest gifts and entertainment) to the detriment of high-risk areas (e.g., large government bids, questionable payments to third-party consultants, or excessive discounts to resellers and distributors).

Related Posts