In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of SPCM 480 Dynamics of Organizational Communication

Research Paper

How Organizational Communication and Communication Techniques Have Positively Affected the Philadelphia Phillies Franchise

By

Jimmy Kateeb

Presented to

Dr. Ross Singer

In partial fulfillment of the requirements of SPCM 480 – Dynamics of Organizational Communication

Fall 2010

(1) This paper will show how the Philadelphia Phillies use organizational communication to maximize the potential of their organization. The Phillies have completely changed the outlook of their organization, from an organization that has more losses than any team ever in professional sports; the only team to have over 10,000 losses and a 14 year playoff drought to a team that has won their division the past four seasons, making it to the World Series twice and winning a World Series in 2008, their second in the team’s 122 year history. Before 2007 the Phillies had made the playoffs 9 other times in 118 years. This paper will show how the Phillies have utilized internal communication and communication techniques to change the team’s culture. The new organizational identity for the Philadelphia Phillies is one of winning, professionalism and class, where players want to come and play, compared to their past history when players would come to Philadelphia when their careers were about to die. Proper internal communication has now given the Phillies something to be proud of throughout professional sports and in the city of Philadelphia. This paper will also examine talent evaluation, organizational culture, leadership, conflict, and how the Phillies new identity has made them a much more profitable organization.

Internal organizational communication is a complex issue, were all departments must work in harmony with each other to truly optimize the best traits of the organization. A sports franchise needs internal communication with ownership, executives, administration, management, scouts, and minor league affiliates. This internal communication starts with baseball executives who are the general manager. The general manager is responsible for the day to day running of baseball operations, basically who is hired and who is fired.

In 2005 the Phillies hired Pat Gillick to become their new general manager; Gillick won two World Series as the general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays. When Gillick arrived to the Phillies the core of the team was already there from the Phillies ability to draft star players like Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, and Cole Hamels, this shows that the general manager before Gillick, Ed Wade who is now the general manager of the Houston Astros deserves some of the credit for the Phillies success. Wade was able to identify the right kind of players the Phillies wanted to target through the MLB draft, they wanted to draft players with good attitudes that of course still had ability to become good Major League Baseball players, but drafting the right kind of athletes was a very integral part the Phillies success today. This was the way that Legendary Phillies manager Connie Mack wanted to build his teams. “Mack's philosophy of management was "you get good people, you treat them well, and you'll win." Mack's approach very much foretold the view of the human relations school of management, which followed scientific management as the next popular management style in business.”(2)

The Phillies ownership thought it was time for some organizational change, at this point the Phillies were only a few pieces away from being where they wanted to be as an organization and they decided to part ways with Ed Wade go with the experienced 68 year old Gillick with the proven winning track record, not to mention 45 years of Major League Baseball front office experience, to get the pieces they needed and to groom assistant general manager Ruben Amaro as the teams next general manager in the process. After the Phillies 2008 World Series victory Gillick retired as the Phillies general manager but he still stays on the Phillies payroll as a senior advisor to the general manager. So today Amaro is the current general manager after serving his time as the assistant under Wade and Gillick, learning the way the Phillies operate as a successful organization. The Phillies are not the New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox they do not have the kind of revenues the Yankees and Red Sox have, although they are in the top five in revenue which is a direct result of winning, the Phillies had to build their team before they could buy the missing links needed. "We do things a little differently," Philadelphia general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. said of Yankees comparisons. "We don't have those kinds of revenues. ... The only way we can do it is with scouting and development."(3)

“A GM of a MLB team is the ultimate decision-maker, the one who usually has the power to assemble a ball club to compete at the major-league level. Many factors influence how a GM operates within a franchise; those factors dictate how much influence he or she has on managing the team. GMs must be able to identify the team’s needs and provide solutions when available. They are responsible for building the team from the resources provided. GMs are constrained by the budgets presented by ownership, as well as the quantity and quality of the employees throughout the organization, including scouts, coaches, managers, instructors, player development executives, baseball operations assistants, and various other members of the front-office staff. Information is processed by all of the teams’ employees and directed through distinct departments, to the team executives (Scouting Director, Farm Director, and Assistant GM), and eventually to the GM. Sometimes the onus falls on the GM to make the final decision on many (if not all) issues facing the club; other times the GM delegates this responsibility to team executives. GMs commonly lean on others within the office for support and advice.”(4)

There are many responsibilities to being the GM of a MLB team; this is why the Phillies felt it was so important to bring in Pat Gillick to groom future GM Ruben Amaro. Now the responsibility lies on Amaro to keep the lines of communication open between all levels of front office and staff. It would be impossible for the GM to manage every aspect of the ball club so it is vital he has the right people in place for the different areas of specialization. The different areas of specialization that Amaro has to manage and communicate properly with include; scouting, player development, ownership, other front office personnel, and on field management. There are many factors included in to each decision Amaro makes regarding acquiring and getting rid of talent.

Evaluating the needs of the team and providing solutions when necessary is the main objective of the General Manager and the way it is done is through good open lines of communication. Communication is critical to the success of the team, Amaro needs to communicate with the field manager Charlie Manual to know what his opinions are on what the team needs and trying to find the best way to obtain the needs by the best way that fit the organizations culture and ability to obtain the need, whether through a trade or a free agent signing, or does the team have somebody in the minor leagues close enough to be ready to play Major League Baseball. If the organization feels the best way to obtain the talent is through free agency Amaro needs to communicate with ownership and the organizations financial officers to see if the organization can afford to sign the new player, knowing when current salaries expire and planning ahead for the future year’s payroll. If the team is looking to acquire a player through a trade the same monetary questions arise, also communicating with the Farm Director, for the reason will the trade jeopardize the future of the farm system leaving it depleted and hurting the chances of winning down the road. This process is built through a process of trust with the farm director and minor league management knowing what players are developing in the minor leagues through communication.

When bringing in a player through free agency or a trade Amaro must communicate with Manual again to see if the player will fit the organizations culture or will the player cause conflict throughout the organization, communicating with players that assume leadership roles on the team what their opinions are of the player the team wants to bring in is also crucial. The Phillies have developed a clubhouse and a culture that is accustomed to do doing things a certain way that is valued by the organization and the city of Philadelphia and most importantly has lead to a wining culture. Considering all factors and opinions of the people that built the organizational success is critical to maintaining success.

The Organizational culture of the Phillies has been established in a number of different ways. The way the organization has chose to lead and deal with conflict has set up the culture of professionalism and winning ways. After the 2004 season the Phillies fired Larry Bowa as their manager, bringing in Charlie Manual as the manager to start the 2005 season. Larry Bowa was a fiery manager that had problems communicating with players, namely All Star third baseman Scott Rolen causing Rolen to want out of Philadelphia, Rolen was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in a trade that cost the Phillies their star player and at the time of the trade, most baseball people thought the Phillies did not receive fair market value for the caliber of a young player that Rolen was. Upper management thought that the conflict Bowa had with his star player was negative to the culture of the organization. This conflict that was in the Phillies organization was both destructive and productive. It caused the Phillies their star player, but at the same time made way for the organizational change needed. The Phillies wishing not to lose any more talent decided to go in a completely different direction with their next manager, changing the culture of the clubhouse selecting a more even keeled player’s manager in Manual. “Conflict is defined as “perceptions by the parties involved [in a group] that they hold discrepant views or have interpersonal incompatibilities.”(5) Manual was able to garner the respect of the clubhouse in a short time and made a clubhouse where leaders could lead. Manual doesn’t have many team rules only expecting the players to play hard and to be on time.

Early in the Phillies 2008 World Series Championship year, Charlie Manuel benched Jimmy Rollins in the middle of a game for not hustling. At the time, Rollins was the reigning most valuable player in the National League. But Rollins broke one of Manuel’s two rules by failing to hustle, so he was told to take a seat in the dugout. If Manual would do this to the reigning League MVP, this could happen to anyone else on the roster. There have been plenty of cases in professional sports where there are two sets of rules, one set for the star players and another set for everyone else. Not in the Phillies case, everyone from the reigning league MVP to the last man on the bench are held accountable to the values and the beliefs the team has. The way Rollins reacted to the benching could have negatively affected the culture of the team, if Rollins thought he was treated unfairly and pouted about the benching verbally or nonverbally it could have been very detrimental to the team’s culture and climate, but he didn’t, his response was "He has two rules -- be on time and hustle; and I broke one of them today," Rollins said of manager Charlie Manuel on Thursday, accepting responsibility. "I know better. Sometimes the manager gets you. I just have to go out there and make sure I don't do it again. It's something you learn from."(6) This is the culture the Phillies have any many sports organizations wish they had and the culture spreads through the team like a virus. This culture creates the emergence of leaders establishing an attitude of this is how we do things around here; if you want to play here you do things this way.

In the 2008 National League Championship Series, Phillies Outfielder Shane Victorino hit a Grand Slam off of Cy Young pitcher C.C. Sabathia in the second inning of a playoff game. Victorino ran around the bases with one arm up in the air, the next day some of the players on the Phillies took the press clipping of Victorino running around the bases with his arm in the air and wrote “Jose Reyes with an arrow pointing down at Victorino”, and then put it on his locker. The reason for doing this according to Cole Hamels was, “You know, when Jose Reyes hits home runs, he points his finger up like he won the game and he might have hit it only in the first inning or the third inning. Well, when Shane did it, he did the same exact thing so we were like, “Hey Shane, this doesn’t win the game, we still got a lot of game to play. Why are you trying to be like Jose Reyes?” And so that was kind of where it came from was — even though you hit the big home run, you don’t need the [???]. You just need to run around the bases and just kind of get the game started. So, that’s kind of where it came from.”(7) This was the Phillies way of saying we have not won anything yet, let’s wait until the game is over, we still have a job to do. They were not acting negatively to Victorino they were reminding him of how things are done within the Phillies culture, how they separate themselves from other organizations that do not have the same values as the Phillies do.

“The culture of a group can now be defined as a pattern of shared basic assumptions learned by a group as it solved its problems as external adaption and internal integration, which has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.”(8) This culture was established by bringing in new leaders that could help develop the organizational change needed. “After a group has a culture, it will pass elements of its culture on to new generations of group members.”(8) The Phillies clubhouse is constantly passing on this culture to the new members by the team’s ability to lead. Early in the 2010 season Shane Victorino went on the 15 day disabled list (DL) and the Phillies called up their top prospect 21 year old Dominic Brown, after Victorino returned from the DL, Manual decided to keep Brown on the Major League ball club even though he would not be receiving regular at bats which is important for young players to get. Brown could have received the regular at bats in the minor leagues but Manual wanted to let Brown be around the winning culture of the team. Manual thought that the experience of being around the winning culture and how the Phillies do things would be more important than getting regular at bats in the minor leagues.