In 2017, Fortune Magazine ranked Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein #1 on their list of the “World’s Greatest Leaders.”

Epstein is considered to be the curse breaker. He is credited as the man who broke the curse of the Bambino, ending the 86-year championship drought for the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series in 2004 and 2007. If that wasn’t enough, in 2012, he took on the task of reversing the misfortunes of the Chicago Cubs. In 2016, after a long 108 years of suffering, the Chicago Cubs finally won the World Series. While many contributed to their success, Epstein is the mastermind behind the transformation.
Oh, and did I mention he did all of this before the age of 43?

On 1/16/17, Theo Epstein was a guest of The Axe Files with David Axelrod podcast.

In the podcast, Epstein discusses a variety of topics- growing up in Massachusetts, becoming Red Sox GM at 28 years old, advanced stats and how they helped win championships in Chicago and Boston, and his overall career path.

Early on, Epstein worked with smaller clubs like the Orioles and Padres, which allowed him to take on more responsibility and roles that he would have otherwise not been able to at a bigger club. He learned to be more creative and find different solutions to tasks.

During that time, Epstein learned about the twenty percent rule:

I always tell players when they’re starting out in sports, whoever your boss is, they have 20 percent of their job that they don’t like at all. So if you can ask them or figure out what that 20 percent is and they found a way to do it for them, you’ll make them happy, improve their quality of life, work experience and also gain invaluable experience for yourself. If you do a good job with it, they’ll start to give you more.

This is what happened for Theo in San Diego. He used every opportunity to learn and gain valuable experience, which allowed him to rise to director of baseball operations and ultimately become general manager for the Red Sox. Many years and three World Series Championships later, Epstein still lives by the 20 percent rule: “If you do a good job with it, they’ll start to give you more and more responsibility.”

I want you to check out the rest of the podcast, and I invite you to read Tom Verducci’s book The Cubs Way. In the book, Verducci takes on the journey of the 2016 Chicago Cubs and outlines the details of Epstein’s plan that engineered one of the most remarkable turnarounds in sports.