Pages

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Business Lessons to Cross the Boundary: Part 4

As we hit the road running with the enthusiasm of the ICC World T20, we continue to search for business lessons from the cricket field. At Ishan Institute of Management & Technology, one of the top PGDM colleges in Delhi NCR the academic team always searches for unorthodox solutions to business issues. Over the last twenty two years of existence, there has been a great sense of realization about how important it is to create a vibrant and dynamic climate inside the classroom for young and aspiring business graduates. At the heart of creating a climate conducive to performance in the classroom, work place or the dressing room is the way organizations deal with people. Inventories can be managed but people have to be led. People and not brick and mortar make enterprises.

Constructed Teams are Ideal Teams
There is a lot of debate that goes into the merit of team selection and the way both cricket teams and business enterprises go about the business of selecting people. Many critics tend to go with the conventional wisdom that selection should be based on performance. The word performance has both the present and past dimensions. While it is true that no selection should ideally be based on reputation that has been built on past performances, it is true that past performances should not be completely ignored as well. Present performance is substituted for by the word “form” in contemporary cricket parlance. As the Indian legend Sunil Gavaskar remarks in Sunny Days: ‘Form is temporary Class is permanent.” A consistent performance trend needs to be identified depending upon the immediate goals and objectives of the team. Horses for courses are horses that win races. It may sound simple but carries a lot of weight.

In 1983, when India won the World Cup for the first time, a large chunk of the players came from 4 cities. In 2011, when India won the World Cup for the second time, the players came from no less than 9 cities. Constructed teams are built around differences in skills that individual players bring to the table. Differences bring the complementary factor into the team. Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly were successful as an opening pair in ODI cricket because of the differences in their techniques, style, shot selection and temperament, not because they were similar. The United States football team under their coach Jurgen Kleinsmann has roped in players from different ethnic origins and nationalities, given them American citizenship and performed above average in FIFA World Cups.

Separate the Roles of the Player and the Leader
A leader is the decision maker and a resource allocator whose job is to match skills of players with situations in a game and optimize the use for the best results. A player’s role is defined in terms of what the team expects from him. An opening batsman is expected to give a flying start to the team in ODI cricket. A first down batsman is expected to play the role of the sheet anchor, shield the middle order and set the stage for lower middle order batsmen to slog in the end. The roles of the captain and the player must be differentiated.

Imran Khan had the role of being the strike bowler in the middle stages of his career. In his last essay in the 1992 World Cup his role was that of a captain who could win the World Cup. When two roles are given to the same individual, the yardsticks of performance measurement overlap. This should be avoided at all costs. Recall how Australia used to come hard at Sourav Ganguly, when he was the captain. The on field barbs, verbal volleys and in certain cases expletives that were thrown at him had the objective of creating tremendous psychological pressure on him, disturb his performance as a player and then demoralize him as a captain. If the bat of the captain does not do the talking, he is left with little or no moral authority to demand performance from his fellow team mates. While it may sound odd, results prove that it makes sense to continue with a captain even if he fails as a player as long as he is producing results for the team.

Communication and Not Instruction is the Key to Man Management
When a rookie Irfan Pathan was bowling to the Aussies in tests and got whacked by the strong Australian batsmen, he started questioning his abilities. It could have been disastrous for a man who had just walked into the team. However Sourav Ganguly, the then captain used to make it a point to reach out to Irfan Pathan, have a chat with him, and ask him for the exact kind of field placements he wanted and reassure that the alignment of strategy and execution would bring results. And it did!

A young Inzamam Ul Haq had told his captain his unwillingness to take the field owing to a continuous run of poor form during the 1992 World cup ahead of the semi-final. Imran’s reply was that he had not brought Inzaman from Multan to Auckland just to warm the benches. Imran said that he believed that Inzamam was the best player of fast bowling in the world. The result was a fabulous match winning knock in the semi final that pushed New Zealand out of that World Cup. The leader’s job is to communicate not to instruct.

Trust Deficit is More Dangerous than Fiscal Deficit
At the highest level of business and sport, the pressure to perform has, is and will always be there. It should be there. Numbers matter but more than that the tuning between the leader and his men! In times of recession, slack performance of the team and downslides, it is obvious that the leader has his neck on the line. What the leader does then determines whether the leader wants to save the team or simply his neck. No player enjoys performing under a captain who squarely puts the blame on his boys behind closed four walls of an office. The job of the leader is to take the flake on his own and yet come out smiling only to reassure his boys that the job can be done.

In 1992, the then manager of the Pakistan team Intikhab Alam asked the skipper Imran about booking return tickets for the team on the back of disastrous performances in the league stage. Imran asked Alam not to book tickets but to focus on the matches that were lined up ahead. The result: even after almost 25years of that victory, when Imran calls up his boys like Wasim Akram, the response is to sit straight and answer: “Yes, Skipper!”