It’s Opening Day for the 2026 baseball season, so I captured this interview with my friend, Kansas City Royals broadcaster Joel Goldberg.

Leaders tend to look for breakthrough strategies in moments of doubt. More often, it’s the fundamentals that decide the outcome.

Joel has spent more than 30 years watching this play out. As the voice of the Kansas City Royals, he’s seen championship teams and struggling ones operate under the same conditions with very different results. His lens is baseball, but what he really observes is how people perform together over time.

He captured these insights in his new book, Small Ball, Big Dreams.

Control What You Can Actually Control

Joel’s career didn’t begin with opportunity; it began with rejection … twenty-five times. He couldn’t control whether anyone hired him, but he could control whether they remembered him.

“I couldn’t decide whether they were going to hire me or not,” he told me. “But I could certainly decide whether they knew about me.”

So he picked up the phone, a landline back then, and started calling TV stations across the country, telling them he’d be “passing through town.” Once they agreed to meet, he made it true, driving across state lines to shake hands and deliver his demo tape.

That decision changed his trajectory. It also highlights something leaders often overlook: we spend too much time worrying about outcomes we don’t control and not enough time tightening the behaviors that actually drive them.

Joel put it plainly:

“When outcomes are uncertain, you have to control the controllables. You can control output. You can control effort. You can control the way you treat people.”

The problem with judging success by the outcome is that you often end up rewarding luck.

Your “Perfect” Answer Can Be the Problem

Leaders often assume their job is to provide the best answer. In practice, that instinct can undermine the very performance you’re trying to improve. Your team’s decent solution is often better than your perfect one, because they own it. And because they own it, they will see it through successfully.

Joel’s story reflects the same principle from a different angle. He didn’t wait for someone to hand him an opportunity; he acted in a way that made people respond. That ownership mattered more than someone else’s perfectly scripted plan.

When people take ownership, you get commitment. Commitment leads to follow-through, which creates success.

Talent Helps. Fit Decides.

Joel has watched enough teams to recognize a consistent pattern. Talent draws attention, but fit determines whether that talent translates into performance.

“Having the most talented people is great,” he said, “but they better fit from a personality and culture standpoint.”

Joel has seen teams with strong talent gel and win championships. He’s also seen talent-packed teams come apart at the seams.

“I’d rather have less talent that fits than a little more talent that doesn’t.”

Misfit talent erodes trust, drains energy, and weakens standards until the effects become difficult to reverse. Fit isn’t static. It requires attention, curiosity, and a willingness to see what’s actually happening rather than what you hope is happening.

“Never stop asking. Never stop listening. Know your people.”

This Is a Relationship Business

Near the end of our conversation, Joel made a point that applies far beyond baseball:

“I’m in the relationship business, not the baseball business.”

Most leaders would agree with that statement. The challenge is living it consistently.

You spend a great deal of time on strategy and growth, but execution lives in how people treat one another, uphold standards, and do what’s right.

These are small things. They don’t always show up immediately on a dashboard, but they shape whether the larger strategy works. Your culture might not actually eat strategy for breakfast, but it can make your strategy unexecutable.

The Long Game Is Built Quietly

Signature successes are usually the result of small decisions executed well. You win by amassing the fundamentals: hitting, pitching, and fielding, rather than with the occasional home run.

The opposite is also true. Poorly executed fundamentals amass over time into bad habits that require enormous energy to correct.

One of the best ways to prevent crises and reduce over-reliance on you is to set and enforce clear standards on the fundamentals. As Joel tells us, small ball creates big wins.