Defense wins championships.
It’s an old sport cliche. However, the Denver Broncos proved it last night in the Super Bowl. The Orange Crush neutralized the NFL’s MVP, Cam Newton. Peyton Manning rounded off his career, landing win 200. Mr. Manning still has the most playoff losses of any quarterback. Of course that is because he has been to the playoffs so many times.
As with football, defense wins compliance.
It’s what you prevent that counts, not what you catch. The number one goal of compliance is to convince your employees to not even think of doing something wrong. A catch means that the employee did something wrong. Your compliance was good enough to see the violation, just not good enough to prevent it from happening in the first place.
That means measuring the effectiveness of compliance is hard. With the best compliance, nothing happens, so there is nothing to measure. If you measure a decrease in catches, that could be because the compliance is better or it could mean your detection is worse.
You could argue the same bias in football. The league MVP and college’s Heisman trophy are disproportionately awarded to quarterbacks and running backs. It was refreshing to see Von Miller, a defensive player, win the Super Bowl MVP.
Sources:
- Does Defense Really Win Championships? by Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim in Freakonomics
- Inside One Of The Best Defensive Matchups In Super Bowl History by Neil Paine in Five Thirty Eight
