In Moneyball, Billy Beane stopped judging players by how they looked or their batting averages. Instead, he measured what actually predicted wins: on-base percentage. That shift transformed the Oakland A’s into a team that beat the odds.
Business is no different. If you’re looking at the wrong metrics in training, you’re making the same mistake as those old scouts.
Batting Averages Don’t Win Games — and Quiz Scores Don’t Win Business
CEOs are often shown the batting averages of training: completions, quiz scores, and smile sheets. Those stats are easy to collect and look reassuring on a dashboard. But just like batting averages, they don’t predict wins.
If these are the only metrics you’re shown, you’re not investing in learning. You’re investing in vanity numbers.
Behavior Change Is the On-Base Percentage of Learning
In training, the measure that matters isn’t completion or recall. It’s behavior change.
When training works, employees don’t just know something new — they do something new. They complete tasks faster, make fewer mistakes, follow processes more reliably, serve clients better. Those are the equivalents of getting on base: small, consistent, observable actions that add up to wins.
Your job as CEO is to ask the same question Billy Beane asked: are we measuring the things that actually predict outcomes, or are we stuck admiring the wrong stats?
Behavior Drives Business Results
The link is straightforward:
- Fewer mistakes = reduced risk. Compliance misses, quality errors, safety issues — all expensive and reputation-damaging — go down when training sticks.
- Efficiency gains = cost savings. When employees actually adopt new processes — and when shortcuts don’t stay locked away as tribal knowledge for the curious few — the whole workforce runs faster. That reduces waste, rework, and cycle times.
- Better service = stronger revenue. When employees apply training with clients, satisfaction rises, loyalty grows, and sales follow.
These are the metrics that belong in your executive conversations — not whether the training got 5 stars on a smile sheet.
Your Role: Fuel It, Don’t Politicize It
Here’s the good news: you don’t have to design training or pick evaluation models. That’s L&D’s job. Your role is to enable them.
Give them the budget, time, and mandate to focus on behavior and business impact, instead of chasing vanity numbers. And don’t let politics get in the way. Department heads will sometimes try to bully training into cranking out courses to check a box or cover themselves. If you allow that, you’re back to measuring batting averages.
Your leadership team needs to be on board with this approach. Everyone has to align around the same truth: training is not about making people feel good, it’s about ensuring they can do their jobs better tomorrow than they could yesterday.
Billy Beane didn’t reinvent baseball by appeasing the scouts. He changed the game by insisting the team focus on what actually produced wins. That’s what you need to do for your L&D team.
Full Circle
We’ve come to the end of this three-part series on how learning really works inside organizations:
- Part 1 (Curious George, CEO): Curiosity may have gotten YOU to the top — but it can blind you to the fact that most employees aren’t wired like you. Information alone is not training.
- Part 2 (John Glenn, CEO): Quizzes and surveys don’t prove mastery. Performance under pressure is the only thing that matters.
- Part 3 (Billy Beane, CEO): When you measure the right thing — behavior change — you get the results that move your business.
Training isn’t about handing out information. It isn’t about high quiz scores. It isn’t about employees enjoying the slides. It’s about changing what people do.
Because in business, just like in baseball, you don’t win by admiring the wrong stats. You win by measuring and reinforcing the behaviors that move your business forward.
