Here is a great article on basketball. Yes, I know this an accounting blog, but this article makes a great point that can be considered to have an analog in the business world:
BYU statistics professors Gil Fellingham and Shane Reese and master’s student Garritt Page compared the value of 13 box score statistics from an entire NBA season across the five player positions to see how much each contributed to winning games.
Their findings? Small forwards who assist teammates and don’t turn the ball over are golden. Of all the combinations of stats and positions, the study found that assists by small forwards contribute the most to a team’s likelihood of winning. Meanwhile, turnovers by small forwards do more harm than turnovers by players at other positions.
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That’s because they found passing the basketball to set up a score is more important than actually making a field goal when it comes to winning, according to the analysis.
I constantly preach that a good accounting system is essential to a business’ overall profitability. I don’t mean measuring profitability; I mean having profit.
That new idea or that new equipment or that new strategic alliance are all important and exciting, but they mean nothing without an easy-to-use/ease-to-peruse accounting system.
Being able to “score the ball” is useless when there is to nobody to get the ball to the scorer.
Maybe the most important player on your business advisory team is your Small Business Accounting specialist.