…today’s secret…Moneyball for the marginalized.

Moneyball is a 2011 movie highlighting General Manager Billy Beane’s attempt to make the Oakland Athletics a winning baseball team with the smallest budget in professional baseball.

In 2002 Beane shied away from ‘big time’ expensive players and his Oakland scouts’ intuition to use undervalued players who had specific baseball skills…like this player who got on base more than others, or that pitcher who had a low ratio of walks to innings pitched.

It’s was not about the players’ baggage, garbage, or brokenness. It was about players’ strengths, what unique metrics they had that could contribute to Oakland’s winning.

Beane’s large-scale introduction of this crazy model set in motion a radical revolution in sports metrics. All major sports now track little recognized player statistics that could help their team win.

Marginalized populations, individuals who face social, economic, educational, physical, or mental hardships also have baggage, garbage, or brokenness in their lives.

Like Beane’s undervalued players, they also have strengths, hidden characteristics which enable them to help others….

Could their strength be…

…showing up for work
…being trainable
…following directions
…being safety conscious
…creating zero conflict
…being flexible, prepared, resilent, etc. etc.?

The prevailing ideology in helping people has been to identify and fill a person’s deficits…you’re done…now go get em’…

But thankfully, things are starting to change. Forward thinkers are learning that it’s not always about a person’s deficits, but a person’s strengths.

Be like Billy Beane with the people you’re helping. Understand that life isn’t about what they lack, it’s about what they do with what they have.

Everyone is broken a little. The most broken are those who pretend they are not.

By the way, can you identify YOUR individual strengths?