T20 World Cup – A Memorable Victory

A real tribute to the young Indian Cricket team for winning such a sensational match against Pakistan in the T20 final. They showed lot of enthusiasm and character. I think more than their talent, their character helped them to win all the tough matches. Really, it was a true example of “Give your best, rest will be history”. The euphoria in Indian public was also worth noticing. I am sure the kind of reception the Indian team got while returning home is something for them to treasure for rest of the life to come. It doesn’t happen often.

Ok, now with all these euphoria, time has come to think about future. It’s true that these young lads showed a lot of courage. We probably need to think of introducing them in the longer version of the game. At the same time we must keep them under a good stewardship of Dhoni, Yuvraj & other senior players. It’s just the beginning, probably they need to be trained both physically and mentally to perform better in all forms of the game. We need to think of good and healthy combination of senior and junior players in the team. It will be wrong if we say, Seniors are no longer required. They may not be a good fit for T20, but longer version of the game requires a different kind of mindset which these guys have. In the same time, these guys will prove as good mentors to the young guns if used properly.

I am sure the experience of Seniors and enthusiasm of Juniors will help us build a winning team for future. Good luck to Indian Cricket Team.

4 Obsessions of Leadership

I read a brilliant book off late named as “The Four Obsessions of An Extraordinary Executive” by Patric Lencioni. It’s inspiring and talks a lot of common sense. The book is designed around 4 basic principles which are essential to build an extraordinary organization.

First, it talks about creating a Cohesive Leadership Team. It is about building a leadership team that understands each other well, works towards same goal and more over goes beyond the day-to-day politics to achieve efficiency. Normally the meetings are intense, and full of critical discussions. They confront each other with their points and they hate the “yes-yes” type of discussion. At the end of it, there is no personal attack, there is only room for “what is best for the organization”. I would say, we build a family(among the leadreship team) within an organization. Unless we understand each family member well, there can't be happiness and success within the family.

Second, it talks about creating organizational clarity. This is essential since everybody must understand clearly about where the organization is heading and hence their efforts will remain unidirectional. Each one of them must be clear on the reason behind organization’s very existence, their competitors, their values, their responsibilities. I believe when the goal is clear, people throw ideas in multiple directions to achieve the same and that diversity of thoughts is key to the future success of the organization.

Third, it stretches on over-communication of organizational goal among the employees. Organizational goals are not very straight forward which can be digested in one go. There has to be multiple mediums in which the same communication has to be conveyed and again it has to be done multiple times. It has to be kept simple as much possible. Unless the whole of organization understands the goal, it will be difficult to achieve success.

Fourth, it talks about reinforcing organizational clarity through human systems. Health of an organization is key to its success. Hence there has to be stringent process for hiring the best suited employees, evaluating their performance at work place, rewarding them as and when required and firing them when they don’t meet the organizational goal. It identifies the human resource development as one of the key criteria for a successful organization. After all the organizational success depends on how each individual contributes to the overall success of the organization.

Advantage 99 - Sachin & Team

Will you prefer Sachin making 17,99,8,55,71,94,30 or 17,110,0,7,31,17,51 in a 7 one-day match series? I am sure, the 1^st one looks a much balanced contribution than the 2^nd one. Though in the 1^st option Sachin’s “personal record” will come as “4 half-centuries”, yet it is much better a contribution wrt team than the 2^nd one where he has “1 century” to add to his record. Having said that, let’s analyze Sachin’s psyche and it’s relationship to his performance.

There are quite a lot of player who are very much concerned about their personal milestones. Though they play for the team, yet their personal milestones are also equally important. Sachin is one of them. This is quite evident the way he plays when he is between 90 and 100 (trying to save himself from all possible ways of getting out). Obviously when he got out 99, it would be like a heart attack for him. But when I saw him disappointed after scoring 99, I was quick to realize that he is going to play well in the whole series. It’s because he couldn’t reach his milestone, ie 100 and that will always push him to do better and better in upcoming games. He gets complacent as soon as he reaches his century and he feels very relaxed in the very next game, that complacency costs him dear in rest of the series. Untill and unless he is blessed with a century, he is not going to put his gun down. And that’s what happened in the recently concluded series with England. 99 in second match helped him to play better in rest of the matches. Had he scored a century, I am sure you would have found a different and struggling Sachin. It sounds very out of place, but that’s the fact. As long as he remains a little away from his goal, he is always a better player to watch out. Once he reaches there, suddenly you will find him out of form.

If I have to think from team perspective, I will say it is better if Sachin gets out in 90s in one of the earlier matches of a series. That will push him to perform better and better in the further matches and there by help the team in a greater way. That’s why I call it as “Advantage 99- Sachin & Team”.

Chak De...

Though most part of it is a copy of Miracle, yet it is worth watching. I liked it very much.

The support from the men’s hockey team, losing to Australia in 1^st match, the furious match against Argentina and the one-to-one marking tactics in the match against Korea; all give different perspective to the movie.

Men’s hockey team couldn’t have done better than providing the much needed moral support to the Women’s hockey team. That was the start and the team never looked back. No matter how hard you try, unless there is somebody to support you big time, the going in life is always tougher.

Somehow I feel in every game of life, there is nothing bad to loose 1st time, learn from it and then win the next one. The amount of satisfaction, the feeling of glory and the sustainability of success; everything gets magnified in that case. Most importantly we tend to stay away from all complacencies since we know what failure means and how easy it is to turn the success to a failure. Unless Indian team lost to Australia in 1^st match, I don’t think they would have got the moral booster for the rest of the matches. It makes you try and remove even the slightest possible error in your approach. Probably it’s a human tendency to stay superficial till we commit some serious mistake. That’s why it’s good to commit it sooner than later.

It’s important that a team must be prepared to change its approach if required. And that too on the fly. The match against Argentina was a real example. The idea of treating the opposition with their own medicine was something appreciable. Do we really do that in our day to day life? At least in work place, I know most of us are stuck with the age-old processes. Probably a leader needs to identify that and take corrective action.

Keep a strong eye on the opposition. If you get to know their strategy, it becomes easy to design one for yourself. Most importantly, don’t let the opposition feel that you are playing against their strategy. Allow them to dominate for sometime, make them feel a little complacence and then attack when they are on the peak of their over confidence. Now you understand why Bindya Nayak(specialist on breaking the one-to-one marking) came as a replacement in the match against Korea, if not playing from the beginning.

All these things require a visionary leader to be on the front and that’s exactly where we had Kabir Khan. But I am still wondering about one thing. He noticed about the rivalry between two center forwards from the very 2^nd match. Then why did he wait till Final to bring that issue out? Was that a part of his strategy or was it something overlooked by him; a question that needs to be answered….