The book The Only Rule Is It Has To Work is the true story of how a couple of clever quants, Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller, tried to bring sabermetric superiority to the Sonoma Stompers, a minor league baseball team nestled in California’s wine country. The self-described “statheads” have the chance-of-a-lifetime opportunity to test out their own Moneyball-style theories when the management team and owners of the Stompers invited them to run operations as part of a learning experience and team promotion.

Even if you loathe baseball, it’s a terrific yarn. This is what real-world data-driven organizational transformation looks and feels like. Practically speaking, the book is more insightful — and useful — than Moneyball. The latter is unrealistic for many organizations because, for one thing, there aren’t many bosses like Billy Beane, and, for another, major league teams enjoy resources that most companies don’t. Persuading teams to embrace statistics they don’t really understand makes a nifty tale of data-driven despair. Getting people to consistently and reliably act upon real data is a real leadership challenge. Superior knowledge doesn’t guarantee greater effectiveness.

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