There is so much to learn from everyone and everything. A
few years ago when the founder of the bank I worked in, was given a kabaddi
team to own and manage, he turned to the marketing head and he in turn, turned
to me. I jumped at the opportunity. I had in my team a marketing resource who
was ready to work on it with me. Later on, I migrated him full time into the
team and now is the CEO of the team. Yesterday when I met him at the match
venue, it was amazing to see him grow into an independent manager and he had
managed through the force of his strong will and extremely amiable personality
to run the fortunes of the team around. While being a part of this team’s
journey and process, I too learnt a lot about the complex business of sports
and the even more complex business of talent management.
When the coach and the captain are at cross roads who do you
back? The answer is not so easy. When you have to choose one, who do you
choose? The Indian cricket team was at this dilemma some time back. They had a
captain who was young, aggressive and energetic. A player who might finish as
one the greatest ever and a team who was moving into a brand of aggressive
cricket, not seen by Indians before. This cricketer, Virat was given a free
hand and he set upon destroying and rebuilding the team in his aggressive
mould. He was the first captain we saw in a long time who decided to play 5
bowlers in a test match. This is serious aggression. The norm was to go in with
4 bowlers so that you can pack an extra batsman. Batsman typically help you
consolidate your match while a bowler is what you go for when you want to force
the game. Batsman react and defend and then wear down the opposition to win you
the match. A bowler in a test match plots to get the batsman out and win the
match. Bowlers are the artillery and batsmen are the moat for a test match.
Then news filtered out from the dressing room that the
captain was not getting along with the coach. The coach was Anil Kumble,
possibly one of the greatest players of the game. He was not too long ago an
aggressive leg spinner with a different bowling style and was India’s go to man
in any match situation. Leg spinners are an aggressive wily breed. They have
deception, flight and variation; plus they love getting hit. The more a legspinner
gets hit the more he loves it as that increases the chances of getting wickets.
Also Anil Kumble for the first Indian test captain to start giving it back to
the Aussies real hard and in Australia. He took on a side that was being built
in the aggressive mold by Ganguly and then pushed it over before turning it to
his successor. He added discipline, team work and aggression to the team.
Then immovable object met unstoppable force. When Virat and
Kumble sparred, the board was forced to choose. They choose Virat. Kumble was
asked to leave and another ex indian captain, known to leave a lot to the
captain was taken in by the team. Which is the mot question. Who is the boss?
Is it the coach or is it the captain. Cricket is different from football. In football,
its not that important to have a great inspirational captain. You cant really
control the pace of the game and strategize while at play. You practice set
pieces and then the team executes them on the field. Cricket is almost all
captain. The captain makes a decision every ball. He has the ability to set the
field, make bowling changes and give instructions to the bowler every ball. He
can decide to force the pace of the game or slow it down. He controls the
batting order and keeps the strategy flowing. A captain is integral to the team
and the coach has limited role to play while the match is in flow.
Kabaddi is also a bit of that. Every raid or defense, the
captain controls the team on the mat. My kabbadi team is in a similar dilemma.
We have had our share of captains and coaches. The moot question is facing us
right now. Who is the boss? The captain or the coach. Who is the boss? We face
this dilemma in office as well. It’s the work ethic versus the personality
ethic question. Who is right?
The role of the star player is to perform but within the
strategy of the coach. In kabaddi the coach very clearly told the star captain
– don’t attempt the bonus against the corners, there are ankle specialists
there. The captain promptly went and did just that and got out – twice. So now
what happens? Who gets the boot? The coach or the star.
There is no easy answer to this. I have my answers but I
also know in my heart that they are not so black and white, and definitely not
easy. It comes from a perspective of the immediate ambition or long term
health. My answer is easy – you have to know what the system that you are
trying to create. To me the right answer is that the coach is the absolute
total authority and that he manages the team and the strategies and that he is
the right person in such situations. I have always believed that process over
personality in the long run. But that also means that I have by definition
removed the personality from flourishing. That is a serious mistake to make. If
you remove the personality then all you get is clones who are designed to
simply follow orders and commit themselves to the process. This is the start of
the bureaucracy. Look at me. I want the process for everyone but I want
personality for myself. Such a two faced ass I turned out to be. Personalities
are important as they take society forward, they take companies forward, they
break norms and they challenge status quo. But Process is important it brings
predictability to the process and they have the ability to give consistent
results. The theoretical answer to this that the coach’s job is to put in a
process that people follow but also allow personalities to emerge and flourish.
There, so easily said. But so difficult to follow through.
In fact I think it’s impossible to do it. The problem is this is so easy and
apparent in hindsight. Hindsight. It is impossible to see it coming when you
are leading the pack in a certain direction. This is the bleeding edge of
leadership and team dynamics. How to allow mavericks to perform within
bureaucracy – consistently. Now that I look at myself, I don’t understand what
I am. I am a personality and a process guy all rolled into one. I want process
but I also know that personalities exist and for a good reason. For myself, I
allow my personality to flourish and manifest in various situations at various
points of time. But at the same time I firmly believe in the power of process
to make things work. The ability to constantly follow a norm and a pattern so
as to get the efficiencies of scale and predictability. The plan must work.
Like a bowler who consistently bowls a nagging line outside the off stump to
irritate the batsman more than getting him out. Or a batsman – like me who was
not so good in the A team but played a 45 over match. Here we scored heavily in
the 20 over but lost wickets and I got my batting as the 8th or 9th
batsman in the 22nd over. I batted like a joker and refused to play
any shots as my job at that time was simple – bat out the 45 overs and tire and
frustrate the opposition. That’s process and personality for you. I made the
process of shutting out the game and not playing my natural style for 23 overs
my personality. Process over personality.
This is one of the yo yo issues. As I said before, the cop
out is to say – know when to use what. Or even better – the process must allow
for mavericks to be within the process and shine. All this is easy consultant
speak and impossible practical implementation. Managing people is an art and
science at the same time. That’s why at different times, different people
emerge as ideal leaders. Some do well in a crisis and some do well in peace.
The trick is in understanding one from the other. Not in selecting one from the
other – just a simple understanding. Because no matter what you select the odds
of selecting eth right one is like tossing a coin. You have no real clue on
what is really going to work. In hindsight it all comes out insightful and
there are learnings to take on board. Going in – it’s impossible to know what
to do.
Yet the belief for me is – process still counts. Push for
process as without it you are doomed to fail. You cannot scale and you cannot
build consistency. As for personality – at all times look to nurture
personality. Allow for idiosyncrasies. Allow them to grow without disrupting
too many people. They can disrupt the process but not the people alongside.
They are important as they are the only ones who can bring about meaningful
change. The others follow. Both have their own place in the sun. Balancing the
two is a fine act. There comes the tyranny of ‘or’ versus ‘and’. Very few
people can manage ‘and’, for the most of us it is an ‘or’ choice. That’s why
when people manage ‘and’, magic happens. That’s why we have so few of these
cases and that’s the reason when it happens, history gets rewritten.
As I have grown older I have realized that I am an ordinary
mortal soul in the universe. I may not be destined for greater things. I am a
simple father setting in motion a set of things for others to build out of. I
see no greatness and I have no pretense of one. It will be difficult to do /
achieve anything spectacular. In office, I am sure there are 30,000 people who
love to be one day reach my level. But that is not greatness or anything to be
proud of. It’s a passage of time with common sense.
When I was much younger, I shudder to think of what a hot
headed dumb bum I was. Now I know I am a little less of it. I may still be dumb
headed but at least I have the wisdom to acknowledge it and hence learn from
it. Can you really change so much. I don’t know. May be not. May be you can
reduce the intensity but when your guards are down you will again show your
real side.
This does sound like a little bit of a depressed post with
little hope for change. I don’t mean it to be thus. It is a reflection of the
little mental setbacks that I am getting these days, I guess. It’s just a way
to make up for the optimism that I have exhibited in some of my past posts. I
think I have written, rather naively about the belief that people can change
and that managing people is a simple equation and a question of behavior. I
guess it’s not. It’s far more complex than this. People will not change so
easily and the group dynamics are far too complex than anything else. Possibly
right now, I am in a zone that says, that the answers are complex and that
opposites may not reconcile so easily.
Eesh. I now understand why older men are wiser and
understand discretion to valor equation. I am growing older and the only wiser
thing I know is that no one can really get much wiser …hehehe.
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