What the Chicago Cubs say about leadership

On November 4, 2016, five million people gathered to celebrate the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series.

This was the seventh largest gathering of people in the history of the world, and certainly the largest sports gathering ever. Why was this event so significant to so many people?

For one thing, the Cubs had not won the World Series in 108 years. For every one of those 108 seasons, fans gathered in the spring and said, "This could be the year!"

And the Cubs came close many times. They lost in the World Series seven times between 1908 and 1945. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, they had one of the strongest starting lineups in baseball and never even won their division.

In 2003 the team collapsed in the National League championship series. Despite their enormous fan base and one of the most hallowed stadiums in the entire sports world, the Cubs just could not win.

When human beings do not understand why things happen, we look for explanations. Sports are thus rife with superstitions. We do this because we know that no matter how well we prepare, anything can happen in an athletic event.

For Cub fans, the reason for their team losing became known as "The Curse of the Billy Goat." It was said that a tavern owner wanted to bring his goat into a game with him. When he was not allowed to, he cast a curse upon the Cubs, preventing them from ever winning another championship. Boston Red Sox fans held a similar belief. After the team had traded Babe Ruth (nicknamed the Bambino) to the New York Yankees, they too had a very long World Series drought. This became known as the "Curse of the Bambino." It lasted 86 years and was broken in 2004.

What is interesting is that the same man who broke the Curse of the Bambino also broke the Curse of the Billy Goat. Theo Epstein was hired by the Red Sox in 2002 and resigned his position in Boston to join the Cubs in 2011.

Is Epstein a powerful shaman?

No, he is an effective business leader who understands what it takes to be successful and he is a man who is passionate about baseball. He put together the best teams that he possibly could, with the best leaders and the best players. He created a positive attitude from the top of his organizations to the bottom. He couldn't control the bounce of every ball or the outcome of every game, but he knew that with all of these pieces in place, winning was inevitable.

We too do not control every aspect of our lives. Just as every sports team loses from time to time, we all face our share of setbacks.

The key is to know what we want to achieve, to learn and understand how to achieve it, and to work hard every day to make it come about.

Effective people are not people without problems, they are people who respond effectively to their challenges. All the years of setbacks simply made victory that much more significant for the Cubs.