simple...

Sometimes it gets very difficult to write a post. The prime audience for this blog is currently 7 years old and when she does grow up to read it, it must be relevant enough for her to enjoy it without too much background research. Right now the most important thing on my mind is the IPL finals that were played out yesterday. after ten years, I wouldn’t want her to look up what exactly happened just to understand the blog. Hence I need to write what is relevant and what is easily understandable and get to the essence of my thought.
Yesterday the most interesting learning for me was the approach towards captainship of the two rival captains. Sachin Tendulkar is no doubt a champion but somehow I get the sense that he wants to lead from the front and take the onus of winning single handed. He takes great responsibility for his greatness. I almost get the feeling that he has decided to win it for the team. Dhoni on the other hand seems to trust his simple cricketing brain. He sees it as ‘no rocket science’. You do a set of processes in tune with your reading. I have seen him many times talk in a very simple, straight matter of fact tone.
I have come to believe that that is the best way to approach the game. Simple. Captaining the B team taught me this. The A team at my company is a bunch of committed guys with tons of talent trying hard to win a game. The B team is a bunch of bedraggled bunch of cricketers who are there because they like playing but aren’t good enough, old but still enthu or simply guys wanting to break into the A team. That’s when I learnt that you have to focus on the processes. Use simple thinking. Trust your players. Keep your cricket logical. Keep the motivation simple. Keep your messages simple. Understand the limitations of players. Place your game according to those limitations. And above all have fun. Too much thinking and pressure can really mar the game. Probably we were gifted not have the gift of cricket like the A team. But we had fun while playing and we learnt a bit about the game.
The many games I captained or played in the 7 a side format also gave me the same learnings. Trust your players. That’s the team you have and that’s the best you have got. Let them play to their potential. You can groom them till a point. On the ground, there is no time to improve or coach. I could only see the humour at silly shots and the fun of seeing my bad bowlers being trashed around. I would change the field and the bowlers and batsman depending on what the game would be as I could read it, but then after that there was no frustration. I will set the field and if the batsmen simply cleared the field smashing my best bowler, there is nothing I could do. I saw no point in dropping shoulders on seeing a dropped catch. These are things to be addressed in the training not on the field.
I guess leadership is just that. Trusting the process and backing your team. You don’t need o lead from the front all the time. That will result in a whole ton of frustration and unnecessary pressure. It will lead to burn out. You will cease to enjoy it if you solve all issues by using brute force. We call it the Hanuman effect, wherein you get the whole mountain for just one herb. Give clear instructions. Have clear deliverables and the then trust the team to perform. If you do your processes right then the odds are that the result will be favourable. Bearing down the necks of your team all the time is a waste of energy. And if you need to do that then you need a new team. Given simple rules and deliverables, the decision making like the action has to be decentralised.

The basic tenets of good thought are always those look and sound simple. If they are too complicated then you have every reason to be very sceptical of them.

But what on hell have I become. I can’t watch a straightforward cricketing match without dissecting it in management jargon. I guess it’s a curse. Will have to figure some way get around it. Lame excuse – this blog puts pressure on me to make an intelligent comment on anything, thus forcing….