Pages

Monday, March 14, 2016

Business Lessons to Cross the Boundary: Part 3

Many orthodox academicians teaching at top PGDM colleges in Delhi and elsewhere in India may not subscribe to the improvisation of equating business and cricket. The importance of learning in the contexts of both cricket and business can hardly be overemphasised. Both in business and cricket it takes some time for the best practices to make their way from the cricket ground or the board room to the coaching manuals and business schools. By the time they day, many of these best practices are no more the best practices in business and the new names coming into the big bad world of business and cricket learn what passé is.

Learning thus has to be taught of thinking, analyzing and practicing things afresh. A.K.Lahiri of Hindustan Unilever during the Project Millennium launched by then CEO Keki Dadiaseth had been quoted by the late Sumantra Ghoshal. Lahiri referred to the need for business enterprises to drop the baggage of history. How often do we tend to forget the need to drop the baggage of history under the pretext of empirical evidence, experience and time tested formulae to success in business and sports? Former English cricketer and then coach, the late Bob Woolmer very often used to quote Joan Rivers: “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is mystery.” With so much technology integrated into the game, professional teams, players and coaches watching each other and trying to match step for step leaves no room to sit on old fat.

Those Were the Best of Times. Those Were the Worst of Times
Nobody sledges legends and experience can never be substituted for. Yet given the element of VUCA that has cropped up in business and sport, experience can no longer be blindly relied on. Both in cricket and business disruptors emerge from time to time and dislodge the dynamics of the industry. This phenomenon of disruption can be very unsettling for established market leaders who may be yet to come to terms with the business models of disruptors. South Africa began a dramatic rise towards glory once they were back from the ban and took everybody by surprise. Today Bangladesh is looked forward to with a certain level of respect that they have earned through good performance against established test playing nations. Nokia learnt these tough lessons with D.Shivkumar at the helm of affairs. What happened to Nokia in the Indian market with the advent of smart phones, sleek designs and dual- sim card technology is known to all. It makes sense to emulate the innovation and trend setting spirit of companies that we get to learn in books and case studies. But to compare the “heritage era” of players and managers with the modern rookies is more than unfair. It demeans the current generation of managers and players. For teams in sports and business to succeed they need to come out of the shadows of their predecessors often by going with the tide of time, space and scale. Kumarmangalam Birla did it when he took over the reins of the company on the untimely death of his father. Tim Cook is still trying to do it at Apple. Sadly one must agree that Manchester United, the beloved heartthrob of many across the world has not been able to do it.

If Looks Could Kill and Mean Business as Well
Recall the swagger of Sir Viv Richards when he used to walk down the dressing room into the ground to take guard. Sachin Tendulkar used to walk down any venue in the globe in the backdrop of people chanting his name like devotees. Purely in terms of sporting achievement, Shoaib Akhtar flying down the twenty two yards at Eden Gardens after having taken the wickets of Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar is another instance of a player announcing his arrival on the big stage of the game with his body language. Champion managers and players speak a lot through their body language.

It may not be the business end of business but cements the image of the company, the brand and finally that of the individual. It is difficult to have the body language of a heavy weight boxer like Sir Viv Richards and still focus on business without getting preoccupied with the small battles within the bigger battle. Champion managers and players sell aggression through the body language they emanate, not through actions. The point is to have an aggressive body with the calm and composed mind of a monk!

If Brains Could Win the War
To have an aggressive body and the mind of a monk at the same time sounds very pleasing to the ears but is very difficult to achieve. It starts with the player or the manager setting goals for self and the team. Goal setting is a term that evokes awe and fear in the same breath for both managers and cricketers. Being number one for sure cannot be the goal for everybody. If a company has been fighting to ward off the clouds of uncertainty all its life, then being in business can be referred to as a job well done. The same applies to cricket. There are nations that have less than one fourth of the population of a subcontinent heavyweight like India and still manage to punch above their weight. A fine example of this shall be New Zealand in cricket and Marico Industries in FMCG. New Zealand has a very small player base and yet has managed to do consistently well in all three formats of the game even without lifting the world championship even once. Faced with a giant like Hindustan Unilever, Marico has done well to focus on two to three product lines like coconut hair oil, oats and edible oil. In these product segments Marico comes close to being unbeatable.

Yet the same cannot be said for a team like Australia and India. Winning means everything and it should. With the talent base and resources that these countries have, it is not too much to ask for these teams to win and be number one. It shall be outright demeaning for a company like Infosys to finish a close second. The theory of the second best does not apply to them. Goal setting thus is not and should not be about being number one. More over it is better to choose performance goals over result goals. It is very close to what the Bhagwad Gita teaches. Result goals are dependent on the ‘karma’. Performance goals are worth achieving, because it is up to the managers and players to give their 100% in business and sport.

At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, one of the top PGDM colleges in Delhi, we focus on grooming aspiring managers to have the body language and mind of a champion without being overawed by big names that are in business.