Fear is the Key

Sunday 25^th March 2015. South Africa hammered India for 438 runs in 50 overs. This is like breaking the 10 second barrier in 100 meters running. Just imagine a time trial, where your competitor runs 100 meters in less than 10 seconds, and throws you the gauntlet – try and beat that. In 90% of the cases, you will be beaten even before you start. Mentally.

I guess that’s what happened to the Indian cricket team. We fell 200+ runs short. It is like we took more than 11 seconds to run 100 meters when we had to do it in ten.

I have read a lot of sports writers saying that every game is played in the space which is six inches between your ears. You win or lose in your mind. They say that it is important to inculcate a winning habit. A side which is accustomed to winning finds ways to bounce back from desperate situations. While a side which is accustomed to lose, chokes. It invariably loses its way from a winning situation. Many a times, the underdogs, start well, because they have nothing to lose. They suddenly find themselves in a winning situation which they don’t know how to handle and suddenly start losing their way. There are enough and more examples of teams gifting away winning situations.

Circa 1995, World Chess Championship, Anand vs. Kasparov. Kasparov was the undisputed champion, while Anand was the Challenger. Anand was talented, very fast, known as the whiz kid and Kasparov’s equal. All chess champions came from Russia. The only champion from outside the iron curtain was Bobby Fischer of USA.

In that sense Anand was always the challenger, the pretender, the commoner who aspired to overthrow the king. At that time, it was clear that if anyone could dethrone Kasparov, it would be Anand, but not many were hopeful. World Chess Champion from India? Preposterous.

A match scheduled over twenty games, began with eight consecutive draws. The challenger was hanging in there. Game 9 – Anand won. The challenger was mounting a serious challenge. There was joy in India. Would the king be dethroned?

And then Kasparov won four of the next five games, two playing with black pieces. After fourteen games, Kasparov was leading by three points, massive. The deficit could be surmounted with 6 games left. But my guess is by that point, Anand was mentally defeated. The match did not even last the distance, it got over after 18 games..

Anand learned from this experience and went on to become World Champion, multiple times.

I distinctly remember two hockey matches, which amplify this mental aspect

1985 Champions Trophy – India vs. Germany. Germany leading 5-1 with 10 minutes to go. That is when Pargat Singh a defender, decided he will not lose. He started with solo runs along the flanks slammed one goal and created a few more. It was one of India’s greatest comebacks and we drew the match 5-5

2000 Olympics. A combination of results, meant that India needed to defeat Poland the lowest ranked team to qualify for the semi finals. India had not won an Olympic medal in hockey for 20 years. Here was a chance. The enormity of the situation got to the India hockey team. They could not score till three minutes were left. Two minutes to go, they let in a goal. Poland got away with a 1-1 draw and India’s Olympic medal chances went up in smoke

Let me now go back to another cricket match in March 2006. Australia scored 434 in 50 overs against South Africa. The 400 barrier had never been breached. It would have been natural for the South African players to get dejected. In the break they were sitting with their faces sullen. Suddenly Jacques Kallis said, “They are 15 runs short, its a 450 wicket.” Motivational? Yes. I personally think this was a masterstroke from Kallis. He just insisted that they can win it. As a result South Africa won with one ball to spare.

Looking back at work, there are many such stretch situations.  When we look at the targets, it looks like we need to squeeze blood out of a rock. So many times we dismiss the challenge as not doable. We attribute it to experience and give up even before starting the chase. We are destined to fail.

We see organisations handing over new market / new product roles to young executives. The reason is they have no fear of failure. Experienced people will approach the task saying why it will fail. Young people will approach it with an attitude of “How can we make it work?”

This is because youth knows no fear. They don’t have the experience and hence don’t have any baggage. They don’t understand the word failure and are only driven by the hope to succeed. There are enough and more examples of stretch targets being overshot.

Experience counts, but it also brings fear and baggage. Give me the person, who knows no fear. I would love to have Jacques Kallis in my team.

Preempting Competition

A trip to Udaipur is incomplete without a visit to the City Palace. Against the advice of my better half (Statutory warning: Going against the advice of your spouse, can be injurious to health), I decided to engage a guide for the tour of the palace. These guides can speak Hindi (obviously), English, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, French and a few other languages. The guides charge a differentiated rate for each language, with charges for Hindi being the lowest.

Since we are not from South of the Vindhyas, we preferred Hindi. I have heard that now even in Chennai, the auto drivers speak Hindi, which was unthinkable, fifteen years ago. The IT enabled services industry has managed to unite the country in more ways than we can think of.

The guide led us through the narrow corridors of the palace. The rulers of Udaipur were called Maharanas as they have been undefeated. The most famous of the Maharanas is Rana Pratap. Apparently, Rana Pratap never enjoyed the comforts of the palace and spent his life fighting the Mughals.

The palace has paintings of the famous battle of Haldighati.   It took a cranky four year old to point out a detail in the painting which sowed the seed for this blog. “Dad, the horse looks like an elephant!” As an ‘educated’ parent I dismissed the observation, “Beta, it is a horse not an elephant!” The kids insistence, forced me to look closely, and behind me the guide was smiling. “Look properly sir, it is a horse with an elephant’s trunk!!”

 “Sir, what you are seeing is the famous battle of Haldighati, fought between Maharana Pratap and the Mughals, led by Raja Mansing of Jaipur. Maharana Pratap’s army consisted of horses, while the Mughal army had elephants. The horses are no match for elephants. Hence their faces were covered with elephant trunk masks. In the battlefield, the elephant, seeing the horse with the trunk, will think it is a baby elephant and not attack the same.”

No wonder, the Ranas of Udaipur are undefeated. They have been one step ahead in their game, and pre-empted the competition. Similarly the auto drivers of Chennai have realised that with ITES coming in, there is going to be an influx of non-Tamilians, and they need to be catered to. If they remain stubborn, somebody is going to come in and capture their space.

This leads me to ponder over how we think about our careers. In an extremely competitive and hardworking environment, I have always focussed on getting a good rating and the next promotion. I have always defined my competition, as my peers within the organisation. As long as I am with them or one step ahead of them, it is fine.

The battle of Haldighati, has changed my perspective. I now need to look at competition from the perspective of survival. In response to Mandira Bedi hosting the 2003 ICC Cricket World Cup on TV, Harsha Bhogle once mentioned, “We always thought competition would come from ex-cricketers, we never thought it would come from noodle straps, necklines and hemlines!!” My question today, is where is competition coming from?

To answer this question, I need to change the way I look at competition. My competition is no longer my peers. I need to look at my work and check, whether my skills will be relevant five (maybe three) years from now. I need not bother about the promotion or the increment.

The key word is ‘survival’. I am sure the horses were uncomfortable galloping with the elephant mask on. I am sure they practised hard enough, so they were ready for the battle. They were out of their comfort zone, I need to be out of mine. I need to look at what mask I have to wear, to survive the next five years.

Just yesterday, I read that the ex-CFO of Infosys, in his early 40s is joining Ola. Does he know something, that I don’t? Wonder if it is time to sell my Infy and TCS stock holding, and invest in Ola, Flipkart, Snapdeal etc.

The auto drivers of Chennai, the tourist guides of Udaipur and the battle of Haldighati have clearly signalled that re-inventing yourself is the name of the game. If the skills are not relevant, the horse will be trampled by the elephant.

Taming Virendra Sehwag

Virendra Sehwag needs no introduction. He is an opening batsman, who threw cricketing logic to the winds. Day One of Test match, historical wisdom was you give session one to the bowlers. “Says who? ”,  asked Virendra Sehwag. Hitting on the up, meeting aggression with aggression, he suddenly confused the hell out of bowlers.  It was not unnatural to see a perfectly pitched ball outside the off-stump to be driven to the cover boundary. The angry bowler would then pitch it short, and Sehwag would just upper-cut it to the third man boundary.

Aggression was his forte. However if you think it was blind aggression, you are mistaken. He had a superb defensive technique, and fantastic hand-eye co-ordination. His motto was simple, see ball – hit ball. In 2008, he was picked out of the blue for the tour of Australia and he was a success.

There are many Virendra Sehwags at the workplace. The brashness of youth knows no fear. They come with bright ideas, don’t fear failure, and are aggressive. They are the ones who speak out, without fear of authority or rebuke. Many times their comments are met with sarcastic replies by seniors, even public humiliation. And why does this happen? Simply because they are right, and the seniors have the weight of their ego behind these comments.

These people are go getters and succeed, till they get into the performance management cycle. One of the biggest aspects on the performance management cycle is 'areas of improvement.' Here these people are told, “You are too aggressive. You need to tone down.” Unfortunately these people don’t realise their own value. They rely too much on seniors for advice and try and mould themselves.

Imagining telling Sehwag, you need to curb your aggressive instincts. You would have killed the natural player and I am sure he would have been a failure very soon.

One innings of Virendra Sehwag stands out. January  28^th 2008, Adelaide. One day to go and India were starting their innings 37 runs behind. Early morning on 28^th January, India’s most dependable batsman who could save a test match, had retired hurt. Virendra Sehwag batted close to six hours and scored 151 runs in 236 balls to save the match for India. He played defensively according to the need of the situation. Important thing, is Sehwag had  a test debut in 2001 and this innings came in 2008. The tiger had matured over time, but not lost its claws.

Unfortunately, we expect maturity from young, 23 year kids, with fire in the belly. In the process of building the maturity, we kill the fire. My advice is let them be, these kids will mellow over time. Trying to curb their attacking instincts is trying to destroy the batsman in them.

Team management is not about constructing clones of what is an ideal employee. It is actually, recognising the competencies of an employee and exploiting his / her strengths. Their areas of improvement, can be filled by hiring somebody who is complementary. Teamwork is about hiring different people with different competencies, and ensuring they work together.

After all, you don’t convert Messi into a defender, and don’t ask Michael Schumacher to drive slowly. It is time the corporate world moved from “Areas of Improvement” to “Capitalizing on Strengths.”