” and excerpted below.
“Change,” which uses cases studies like this to illustrate what drives behavior change, was published in January by Little, Brown Spark. The excerpt is reprinted with permission.
A few years ago, I received a phone call from the director of performance research and development at the Philadelphia 76ers. He had seen some of my research on social networks and wondered whether my work might be helpful for the NBA.
The problem, he explained, was scouting.
If you’ve read “Moneyball” by Michael Lewis (or seen the film starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill), you’ll immediately understand the challenge: Professional sports scouting has long been an old boys’ club. Most professional scouts are former players or managers. They have well-established biases regarding how to evaluate players. Longstanding norms in scouting can privilege certain kinds of players (who tend to fail) and ignore other kinds of players (who may succeed).