Edward Jones and Alex Anthopolous...

I was recently at an Edward Jones networking session and a financial advisor has shared his success story over the course of his nine-year career with the company. If you're not familiar with Edward Jones- well, it's a securities and mutual funds company that provides sound investment advice to the very "conservative" investor. When it comes to investing, everyone knows that you must exercise patience.

So I wondered how much patience exactly we would have to exercise with new General Manager Alex Anthopolous until we saw great returns. Like the man from Edward Jones, Anthopolous had roots in the industry before taking the big job. He had worked as an understudy for GM Ricciardi for a number of years. So the transition for Anthopolous would be a little bit smoother and a little bit quicker than for a financial advisor who had experience with a bank that had only limited him to certain funds, certain investments. Ricciardi had done that too- he had limited Anthopolous to his vision.

But what emerged for both the financial advisor and Anthopolous was a new vision. A vision towards helping clients and a team like no other before.

Anthopolous made a number of moves, and constructed his vision based on thoughts of old, current and new philosophies on baseball. Paul Beeston was the old, Ricciardi the current, and Anthopolous the future.

So Anthopolous went on to construct a new team with a younger direction and great potential for success. The Edward Jones financial advisor read all he could, contacted as many people as he could, and eventually began to see his first signs of success when people began calling him instead of him calling them.

Many General Managers have been calling Anthopolous regarding his players of value. But no general manager was forced to pull off the biggest blockbuster trade of the offseason like Anthopolous had to, in dealing Roy Halladay to the Philadelphia Phillies.

And nine years later, the financial advisor was just so modest about it. He'd known how he'd started at the beginning of the last decade, and now he had a younger man questioning him about why he would do those things again to start a financial advisor business.

So here's the point I make- Ricciardi may have been on top of the ball when he first came to the Blue Jays with Moneyball early last decade, but by the end of the decade the rest of the baseball world had caught up. And when that happened, Ricciardi, however smart he was, was nothing more than a mediocre General Manager stuck in the most difficult divison ever. Anthopolous, once again, had a new vision, and is probably using tools that no other manager has really ever used- but he must continue to innovate and change as the season begins and turns into next season for the baseball world is ever changing.

Ricciardi had bought into a formula and couldn't figure out how to get out. The financial advisor would likely fail if he had to start all over again.

But like the financial advisor before him who is fully committed to his job currently in maintaining his network or innovativeness, Anthopolous is the same. And that is the measure of a successful business or team.