Team Building: Cricketing Lessons !

I will have to set aside the cooking analogy that I promised to write about for another day as the IPL IV lessons seem to have more currency.

There are two key messages  that I have come across when it comes to team building.
One is  who you choose  and two is who you retain.

This is very relevant when we start new ventures and how you plan to scale. For a button start situation , we need to figure who the best and affordable are and make sure we get them. Just have a look at Chennai Super kings or for that matter Mumbai Indians. They did their best in picking and retaining their biggest bets. And they went all out in making the most in getting their combo in consistent winners.

Building the senior management team for yourself is also as important. Go behind the ones who you have trusted and make sure they believe in what you start and you showcase your belief in them.
It is not as easy as it is made out to be. Very difficult to meet the pay standards, very high degree of emotional connect needed, not easy to meet many unsaid expectations.  But as long as the vision is shared, there is success waiting to happen.

Retaining your team: This is even more difficult, especially if you have a investors who either do not understand the business or  are eternally impatient on progress.  It is not a rule to assume that each time there is success it is the product and each time there is a setback its the people.

Maintaining the team, allowing them to make their mistakes and adjustments and bringing them to alevel where you are sure they know what they are supposed to do takes time and does not come by nature to many and comes by nurture only to a few.

One of the success factor for consistent performance is a solid team which knows the job , each other and is retained for long. Slice and dice, cut and chop does not work.
In IPL IV, we can see the reason why CSK runs a consistent form, WHy RCB suddenly hit a consistent form,  Why Mumbai performed till they started shuffling and eventually dropping team mates.


It may just a sport but lets know that captains are running the company equivalent which is the team and their performance/wins is the equivalent of revenue and they also appraise members like companies do.

This is really dicey and difficult. But with a bit of care and shrewdness it is achievable.

Start Small, Plan Big, Grow Large!

In my last few assignments I have  been a victim of too many too soon. While I would partly attribute this to the management style of the owners and their inherent maverick approach, I would also attribute this to the way the industry in which I functioned.

A key agenda for growth that many companies  (especially at the start) would have is push many products and services, be present in all categories, get a virtual spread, de-risk, etc... Tell me , while most of us landed up doing all this, it is very late in the day that we realise that we had done one or two of this correctly and hence we are where we are today  in success terms and we did not have the plan and resource to do the rest well and hence we are where we are today.

My own personnel experience of the latter has had its own consequences.. Pushing for many things in parallel is essentially a result of
 a. lack of clarity on what we need to do
 b. A paranoid mind which keeps telling if you are not there then you will miss out.
 c. Your organisation does not have the key strengths to make it and hence you are all over the place.

The resultant effects,  multiple focus (de-focus) areas,  poor or incomplete planning, no growth period for any of them, highly burnt out team and resultant loss of steam in the products.

The lesson here is focus on one key initiative and make it big. I understand the need to have a portfolio of services and the de-risking etc. But don't worry about the portfolio in the first few years of your growth. Make that one thing happen and then  start pushing for many.

Once again Cricket has come to help in reminding the basics of Business. Steve Waugh the great Australian  Skipper once said on his belief in  on-field strategies and tactics," If you don't stand for one thing , You will fall for everything".

What a  depth in that statement!  Very true for any one in today's age and time when specialising in your domain is more important than being a jack of all trades.




In my next post lets figure out  how cooking teaches philosophy!

Parallels from Cricket

It is often that I try and bring analogies from either food/culinary skills or from Cricket. My madness for both has more or less been imbibed into my blood . However, some of those examples and parallels that I have drawn to motivate myself and simplify complex tasks have been absolutely effective.

One of the key complex tasks of any organisation is the achievement of sales targets. Every time a sales target is set either top down or bottom up , discussed, consultative or handed down it eventually lands up with one question ," How is it possible to achieve this? We do not have the time to do this. " etc.

The primary pressure point in achieving sales targets or for that matter any target is TIME. It just flies off as we discuss target and puts pressure on us.

One way to beat this pressure is to look at an one day international match a little more closely.  While every one in the world from viewers to critics to commentators to scorecards  keeps talking about run rate per over and analysing it, the only one who does not really bother about these metrics and focusses on the next ball and sees what he can score off that is the batsmen.

The ODI has 300  legal balls and give and take a few wides and no balls and a few extras , it may be about 310 balls. Any financial year has about 365 days and give and take the sundays (non earning and holidays) and this boils to about 300 revenue earning days .

See it is that simple.

Look at the sales targets from the point of view of the salesman on the street.  What is his overall target? Break it down to his daily target. Score of every ball and wait for the next. Score of each day  that days target and wait for the next day.

No batsmen ever overloads his mind with what he will do in the next ball. He focusses on the current. and waits for the weak bowler or the power plays.

Similarly focus on each day's target, wait for the big festival season, holiday offers, new pdts, big ad campaigns etc to score a flurry and push ur target up.

There is no way you can fall way behind target if you try something like this.

( Those who have been or known the way yellow pages slaesmen function would vouch for this approach)

While in cricket there is a win loss situation, in real life it is only a win as  you did all that you could, focussed on the current, didn't build castles or fool yourself on the big landslide you will achieve on a new product, you worked on a realistic timeline which you  are in control of (today) and still had a lot of time for yourself.

Any big target looks manageable in this approach. Well, it may not need cricket to teach this for many. But for me thats what taught this rule.

Did I land up achieving my targets. Well, every time I followed this method I did.  Each time I played a pre determined stroke ( meaning not assessing the situation and trying to do what had already thought was right strategy or an extravagant move), I failed.

However, when you have a good solid team strength, the chances of most of your team succeeding is very high. One or two falling short is recoverable with a little bit from those over achievers.

And the Managers' job?

Just sit back, relax and manage those daily metrics.

Care and let Care

I distinctly remember when the head of ad sales kept bringing in the erosion of sales personnel to the CEO in review meetings  but never once had any strong recommendation coming forth from the Boss.. Except that  he would say, "I understand your concern. Make sure you do something about it".

How many times in our growing professional life would we have lost personnel at ground level or at the immediate subordinate level  or really had tough situations in tackling them and found ourselves in a whining mood to our bosses. And many times the only support from the bosses would be " You need to handle it".

 Well, its true.. But while we realise this truth in a calmer mood do we really know why our boss said so.

I have been observing this situation in many organisations and have fallen into this cycle myself  though very early in my career.  While , each one can do a bit of an observation to understand what I am talking about, it is imperative to understand the real meaning and method how to convert this into an advantage.

One absolutely sane superior of mine did bring it to my senses the following:

1. As the ultimate boss, he /she is only interested in only in the interests of his immediate reports.  So the first level needs to worry about his next level. and so on. 

2. Encourage your first level to care about their first level.

3. Anticipate and make sure a you have a plan to handle it.

4. Guide to take action but keep the  interference minimal.

Try and not interpret this approach as non- committal or an hierarchical issue or lack of concern for lower levels..

What it means is while your first level knows you care for them , they also learn to do the same by mirroring to their next level. Really, my own experience of retention has been good but at the same time and definitely helped in developing able managers. 

It also gives your direct reports a sense of non-interference from you which I feel  is most critical in  handling personnel. 

Yes, it helps in building effective managers  and strong organisation structures and also lets each managerial level focus on their respective jobs.