For decades, corporate leadership has rewarded the most visible performers—the rainmakers, deal closers, and crisis firefighters. This approach, known as “Striker Bias,” mirrors how elite football once celebrated goal scorers while ignoring the players who kept the system running. A change is now taking place, one that may alter how companies assess success.
The Problem With Counting Only Goals
Since 1978, every FIFA World Cup Golden Ball winner except one had either scored goals or provided assists. The lone exception was a defensive midfielder whose impact came from what didn’t happen—turnovers prevented, attacks neutralized, possession maintained. In 2026, Spain’s Rodrigo Hernández Cascante, called Rodri, won the award without scoring or assisting a single goal.
His selection wasn’t based on sentiment. Data revealed he completed 753 passes at 94% accuracy, conceded just one goal in eight matches, and controlled play in ways that eliminated defensive weaknesses before they appeared. The lesson was straightforward: stability, not spectacle, leads to lasting success.
Businesses struggle with the same issue. Performance reviews and promotions still favor dramatic results—record sales, high-profile deals, turnarounds—while the work of maintaining systems, preventing disruptions, and ensuring smooth operations goes unrecognized. This creates three key problems:
- Teams prioritize short-term wins over long-term stability.
- Leaders who fix self-inflicted crises receive praise, while those who prevent them remain unseen.
- Critical roles in governance, risk management, and operational reliability are undervalued in pay and career advancement.
Most organizations can’t measure “what didn’t happen”—the cyberattack blocked, the supply chain disruption absorbed, the bad acquisition avoided. In an age where data tracks nearly every operational detail, the real obstacle isn’t evidence. It’s perspective.
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How Companies Can Measure What Matters
The tools to monitor systemic health already exist. Process mining, real-time telemetry, and integrated ERP platforms offer visibility into workflows, bottlenecks, and risk exposure. The difficulty lies in adjusting executive dashboards to include these metrics alongside financial ones.
Boards and CEOs could begin by redesigning their scorecards. A modern CEO dashboard might track variance control, system uptime, and cross-functional efficiency with the same attention as quarterly sales. Prevented losses—avoided downtime, breach-free security, regulatory compliance—should be quantified and reported as direct contributors to value, not treated as overhead.
Capital allocation also requires a new approach. High-visibility growth projects often receive funding while the infrastructure enabling stability—process improvements, governance, risk mitigation—gets neglected. Redirecting budgets toward resilience could reduce the need for constant crisis management.
This isn’t just a human resources concern. It’s a governance issue. Companies that focus only on “goals scored” risk missing the underlying friction. The people who stabilize operations may not make headlines, but they create lasting value.
Rodri’s Golden Ball victory showed that even in a sport fixated on scoring, the most important contributions aren’t always the easiest to count. The same principle holds true in business. Shifting focus to long-term stability could help organizations build stronger foundations.