Kohli's team needs more players who are NOT like Kohli

Virat Kohli clearly sets the tone for the Indian Cricket Team
He needs more leaders around him, who are NOT like him

Should members of a team be tightly-knit?

Should a team be a band of brothers, so close that they can live each other’s lives, complete each other’s sentences, and even sense each other’s unspoken thoughts? Should they foster this sense of brotherhood by living every waking minute of their lives together, eating the same meals, listening to the same music, wearing the same clothes, sloping their shoulders at the same angle, sporting the same scruffy beards?

This is a Goldilocks problem. Some unity is clearly good. Too much of this good stuff is counter-productive. It creates group think (or more precisely, group feel). The hard part is to get the balance just right.

What we just saw from the Indian cricket team in England is both the good and the bad side of this Goldilocks problem.

In the Lord’s test, it was thrilling to see the passion, commitment, and belief in this Indian team. The energy India created was so thick that I could have cut it with a knife 5,000 miles away. They created this magic by feeding off and amplifying each other’s intensity.

Two weeks later, at Headingley, the same team were flatter than a dosa (or a pancake). They reminded me of Woody Allen’s truism: that eighty percent of success is just showing up. Our boys didn’t show up. Sure, there was technique involved – the optimal Headlingley length is about a yard and a half fuller than a Lord’s length – but this team has enough resources to have learnt and acted on that technical difference. We didn’t learn quickly enough. We weren’t unlucky. We were uninspired.

England feed off each other's energy
At Headingley, day 4

How can a team go from magical to uninspired in one match? When they’re too close to each other. When their moods, thoughts and feelings are too contagious. Or, when their moods, thoughts and feelings are being orchestrated by one individual. When that happens, the team starts to act like a single organism rather than a set of individuals with distinct minds and roles. When that happens a team, in any walk of like, the team's performance see-saws or yo-yos. They lack the resilience and stability a team should have. 

I think that is happening to Virat's Indian team. When a couple of members get inspired, several others lift their game. When a couple of them get into a funk, several others also get into a funk. This team is too united.

In the long sweep of history, this unity is an excellent thing.

My generation of cricket fans remember the long painful years when the Indian cricket team was anything but united. We remember the time of Gavaskar vs. Kapil Dev regional politics, of the East Zone quota (Barun Burman? Pranob Roy?), of the time when Raj Singh Dungarpur appointed Azharuddin captain to clip the wings of players asking for their fair share of the economic value they were creating, and – the lowest point in our history - the way Azharuddin went on to make money in his own way by throwing matches for bookies. After all those horrors, the unity, continuity, ambition and therefore excellence we’ve seen in the age of Ganguly, Dhoni and Kohli has been a delight.

This unity can’t be taken for granted. We need only look around at the West Indies, Sri Lanka or Pakistan to know the cost of disunity. These countries continue to produce talented individuals. They haven’t had a decent team since Brian Lara, Arjuna Ranatunga or Imran Khan because they haven’t found strong leadership and therefore unity. India has been the only third-world/ emerging-market team consistently challenging the traditional superpowers of England and Australia in the twenty-first century, because we’ve consistently found leadership and unity, because we’ve learnt to play as a team rather than as individuals.

But in the short sweep of history, a couple of “outsiders” – players who haven’t been in the India-bubble for a long time, who break up the (comfortable) unity of the team – will surely help. 

The team can be united without the players thinking and sounding alike. What Khalil Gibran's Prophet said about marriage, "let there be spaces in your togetherness", applies to teamwork as well.

Virat's team needs more independent characters, fresh voices, contrarian thoughts, un-synced emotions. The team needs more mood-makers who can pick up the baton when Kohli is just exhausted, who can balance him out, who can zig when the rest of the team are zagging. 

I don’t think this is going to happen. All the signals from the dressing room are that Virat Kohli will double down on the guys, especially the batters, already in the playing eleven. Which means no "outsiders". Faith easily hardens into stubbornness.

If it’s any consolation, even the best Indian companies - Infosys, Tata Sons, HDFC Bank - have all had their share of difficulties in renewing their executive teams. Its not easy, but it is worth it. 

MSD: Bill Gates :: VK : Steve Jobs
Did Steve Jobs have strong voices around him?

PS: Yes, I could use this thought for a corporate workshop on building an executive team with resilience and bench-strength...

The Power of Shiva's Third Eye. Now Known to Science as "Anthro-Vision"

Lord Shiva 
Also known as Triambakesh - the God with the third eye

Why does Shiva have a third eye?

To see the most important things.

And what are these most important things?

The things which cannot otherwise be seen.

___________________________________________

This interpretation of Shiva’s third eye – that it is for the most important things, the things which cannot otherwise be seen – has long been a personal favourite. This interpretation just received scientific validation from Gillian Tett, Ph.D.

In her recent book Anthro-Vision, Gillian Tett, a Cambridge-trained anthropologist. explains that this Shivite thought – that the most important things are the things that cannot be seen – is right at the heart of Anthropology. She explains that Anthropology “enables you to see around corners, spot what is hidden in plain sight” by listening to “social silences”, by hearing what is left unsaid. Or, by observing the world through Shiva’s third eye.

Now that the provenance of Gillian Tett’s good ideas are clear, her exhortations to use Anthro-Vision in all walks of life take on an added urgency. Anthro-Vision is God’s will!

So let us open our third eyes, see the most important things, hear the sounds of silence, and therefore gain the empathy, insight and sense of humour needed to make the world a better place. 

Gillian Tett, Ph.D.
wants us to use our third eye

Virat Kohli deserves credit for India’s amazing win in Australia

Team India at the Gabba with the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 

Victory at the Gabba! What an amazing win! What incredible attitude, spunk, guts and gumption!

Rishabh and Siraj celebrate

India’s amazing test series victory in Australia was achieved while India’s captain and best batsman - Virat Kohli - was away on paternity leave. So, for the past week my social media feed has been buzzing with snarky memes about how Team India is better off without superstar Kohli, or with TED talk style meditations on how “servant leaders” like Ajinkya Rahane are more effective than “alpha leaders” like Virat.

These memes are missing the point. Kohli deserves a ton of credit for this win.

Kohli’s biggest contribution to this moment was in making winning test series abroad India’s #1 priority.

In the later years of MS Dhoni’s captaincy that commitment was never clear. There was always a feeling that Dhoni’s test team were going through the motions rather than playing with belief, intent, or purpose. That sense of drift was obvious on the abysmal England tours of 2011 and 2014. It seemed obvious that MSD enjoyed limited overs cricket more than test matches. The fog never really lifted until Dhoni retired from test cricket.

At that time, it was easy to imagine that Indian cricket would become IPL-land, happy to have some T20 fun, but with no higher aspirations. With a different leader that could easily have happened.

Fortunately, Kohli never had any doubts that his ambition was to make India a great test team.

He brought in other leaders, like Ravi Shastri, who shared this vision. He committed to the workload of playing more tests, to the more arduous scheduling, to the fitness culture needed to maintain a pack of 8-10 genuine quick bowlers who could bowl with intensity after an entire day’s play in any conditions. Kohli prepped India's test team with away-wins in Sri Lanka and the West Indies, with home wins against New Zealand, South Africa England and Australia before setting out to conquer the final frontier – away wins in the SENA nations.

That prize almost eluded him. With a bit of luck India could have won in South Africa in 2017-18. We lost chasing fourth inning targets of 208 in Cape Town and 287 Pretoria. With a bit more luck India could have won in England in 2018. We lost chasing fourth inning targets of 195 in Birmingham and 245 in Southampton. Compare that with the 328 we hunted down against a better attack in Brisbane.

Mother Cricket finally smiled down on Kohli’s team when India finally beat Australia in Australia in 2018-19 for the first time in history. Captain Kohli’s noble quest hadn’t been in vain. The final frontier had been conquered.

If India had the resources to win again in Australia in 2020-21, it is in significant part because of Kohli’s legacy. There is nothing inevitable about having a team of young test players with the chutzpah to beat the Aussies in Australia. Kohli’s ambition, faith and patient team building set this win up.

The point is not to take anything away from the rest of the leadership group.

Most great achievements have many fathers. Rahane’s calm, Shastri’s mental toughness, even Bharat Arun’s tactical nous all contributed to this glorious moment. But leadership is about more than being the khadoos Maratha rock the rest of the team bat around, it is about more than being calm presence in the dressing room, it is more than making the smart field placings. Leadership is also about having a vision for what we will achieve together and having the resourcefulness and patience to develop a team to deliver on that vision. To that extent the leader who gave us the joy of Brisbane 2021 is the nappy-changing daddy Kohli.

Let there be no doubt that Virat has fire in his belly...

...even if he does have a softer side.

Note: I was surfing the web for pictures of Virat and Anushka with the daughter, who was born on the day India saved the Sydney test. The photos on the net right now are all stock images or fakes.

Samudra Manthan: a stitch-up or a path to salvation?

Samudra Manthan

My children were listening to a story. I was sitting with them, squirming with discomfort.

The story was Samudra Manthan: about the churning of the ocean by the devas and asuras that produced Halahala, the terrible poison, and Amrita, the nectar of immortality. We’d chosen this story because it is one of the nicer, less gory Indian puranas, but I still was uncomfortable, because it story reads like a divine con-job.

The devas invite the asuras to work with them to churn the ocean, implying that they would share the Amrita. Yet, when the Amrita does emerge, Lord Narayana shows up disguised as the beautiful Mohini, gives all the Amrit to the devas and none to the asuras. This was justified because the devas were devotees of Lord Narayana, while the asuras were not. Bascially, its okay because “they” are not God’s people.

To my ears, this moral logic sounded a bit like the logic that European colonials used to justify the genocide of Native Americans, or that Nazis used used against the Jews. I needed to step in and re-frame this story. I needed to find a reasonable interpretation.

It turns out that my grandmother, Kamala Subramaniam, had been similarly troubled by the Samudra  Manthan story, and had thought through its implications. I found a considered, and positive, interpretation in her translation of the Srimad Bhagavatam. Here’s her take:

"The incident of the churning of the ocean must be pondered over. The devas and asuras were both working towards the same end: finding of Amrita. Both worked strenuously and equally sincerely towards this end. They both pulled the mountain Mandara with the snake Vasuki as the rope, and both efforts were equal: as a matter of fact, the asuras put in more work since they had more powerful arms.

As a result, however, the devas enjoyed the benefit while the efforts of the asuras were all wasted. This was because the devas had surrendered themselves to the Lord. They had taken the dust off the feet of the Lord, and their labour were duly rewarded.

Men of the world, when they strain their minds, their riches, their actions and other similar things towards benefiting themselves, their children, their homes and their personal happiness, their actions become all futile. If however, man does the same things dedicating the actions to the Lord, man’s actions will never be fruitless."

I like the Samudra Manthan story partly because churning the ocean is such an easy metaphor for the life-work of a karma yogi, of people like you and me who work to earn a living and raise a family. The point of this metaphor is not that God will appear at the denouement, and distribute goodies to “us” but not to “them”. It is that dedicating one's life-work to the Lord, whatever you conceive Her to be, is its own reward.

Looked at this way, the difference between the devas and asuras is not intrinsic or inborn. The difference arises from the way they frame their lives, the lens through which they choose to see their work. The devas dedicate their work to the Lord, they experience bhakti, and bhakti is the difference between the Amrita the devas experienced, and the bitterness and cynicism the asuras must have experienced.

ॐ  नमो  भगवते  वासुदेवाय.

Daniel Barenboim conducts...learning to lead like the great conductors

Daniel Barenboim conducting the West Eastern Divan Orchestra

The BBC Proms, on TV this week, features the West Eastern Divan Orchestra playing the complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies, conducted by Daniel Barenboim. The West Eastern Divan Orchestra are an ensemble of accomplished musicians from the Middle East, with a compelling story about trying to bring understanding and harmony to that troubled region; they are playing Beethoven's symphonies, unquestionably some of the greatest music ever conceived. Yet the advertising tag-line reads "Daniel Barenboim conducts...". Is this fair? Does the conductor add so much value that he deserves to be the headline act?

I don't have a closed-ended answer to that question, but I am convinced that a conductor adds real value. This is thanks a one of the most memorable business leadership development programs I've attended - The Music Paradigm, with Roger Nierenberg.

This program is built on the premise that a leader in a business corporation is like the conductor of an orchestra. In a business, a machinist, statistician or accountant knows much more about her or his speciality then the Vice President or General Manager every will, like in an orchestra, the violinist, flautist or cellist are more skilled at their respective instruments than the conductor will ever be. The General Manager or the conductor is needed to bring the amazing individual performers together, harmoniously, to make music. The Music Paradigm session starts with members of the class, like me, sitting in the midst of the orchestra. Gradually, as everyone gets comfortable with the setting, members of the class volunteer to step up to the podium, pick up the baton, and conduct the orchestra (with Roger Nierenberg's help).

Roger Nierenberg helps a first-time conductor

What made the Music Paradigm unique, different from the dozens of other team-building or leadership development sessions I've attended, was the experience of stepping up to the podium, picking up the baton, and hearing this virtuoso orchestra responding to your gestures by making music. That was powerful, memorable, profoundly emotional, and completely unlike anything I had felt before.

My classmates and I had a debrief after the Music Paradigm session, and our takeaways were very consistent. We all were NT personalities in the Myers Briggs' framework; science or engineering majors who had experienced success as problem solvers. We were veterans of various leadership programs, and had several years of people management experience. We were used to thinking about leadership in terms of setting direction, getting buy-in or sponsorship, pulling together resources, defining roles and responsibilities, setting up incentives - as a series of problems to be solved. What we were less used to was leadership as an emotional experience. Music as a metaphor made it obvious that a conductor's, or leader's, main contribution is in establishing an emotional connection with the players and with the music, that that emotional connection makes the difference between a competent professional performance, and something that sounds very different, an inspired or visionary performance. My classmates and I may not have disagreed with that thought on a PowerPoint slide, but music brought it home in a way that PowerPoint can't.

Itay Talgam's TED talk makes the same point, with video clips of some of the twentieth century's greatest conductors in action. Maybe the next iteration of this talk will include Daniel Barenboim conducting the West Eastern Divan Orchestra. Enjoy...

Martin Crowe and The Lake Wobegon people-model

"So that is the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking and all the children are above-average."

Every week, Garrison Keillor concludes Prairie Home Companion with these wise words. Similarly, every week, the titans of the corporate world conclude that that they will compete for the future by winning the war-for-talent. They all strive to hire above-average people, and instruct their human resources departments to design "people-models" that allows their company to hire talented employees, as talented as the children of Lake Wobegon.

However, for a practicing business executive, this war-for-talent is mostly irrelevant. Winning the war-for-talent takes too long to matter. I, and most of my peers, have windows of about three years to deliver on our objectives. Over that time frame, the talent we have to work with is usually a given.

Even at Talent Masters, companies supposedly flush with talent like Procter and Gamble or GE, it is rare to step into a role worth doing with a crack team already in place. Best case, one can parachute in a handful of exceptional individuals into key positions. From then on, business leadership is mostly about trying to get your team to punch above their weight, by giving them a sense of unity, direction and belief, and by tactically shaping the game to amplify strengths and cover weaknesses.

A cricket captain’s job is like that of a practicing business executive. As a captain, you can preach, or whinge, about how your cricket board should have invested in the grass-roots game years ago, bringing better players through to the professional level. True, but irrelevant. You’ve got a squad. Your job is to win with that squad, warts and all.

Looked at this way, a good captain is not necessarily one who wins big tournaments. A good captain is one who gets his team to punch above their weight, who wins games he had no right to win given the quality of his players. By this yardstick my all time favourite World Cup captain is not Clive Lloyd, not Steve Waugh, but Martin Crowe in the 1992 World Cup.

Martin Crowe led a bunch of bits and pieces mediocrities, plus one quality player in Crowe himself. Yet, they competed on even terms with clearly superior teams by turning the prevailing cricketing wisdom upside down. Mark Greatbatch opened the batting, slugging the ball over the infield. Dipak Patel opened the bowling with his off-breaks. In the process, Crowe’s Kiwis changed the way 50 over cricket is played, forever.

Crowe’s team, which included dibbly-dobbly merchants like Gavin Larsen, Chris Harris and Willie Watson, were looking good for a spot in the World Cup final until an inspired Inzamam-ul-Haq blitzed Pakistan to a come from behind semi-final victory. Which goes to show that planning, spunk and tactical smarts can’t match god-given talent. However, in a contest between evenly matched teams, smart tactics should make all the difference.

Another brilliant tactician was Shane Warne. I've watched enviously as he conjured up victories out of nothing for Hampshire and Rajasthan Royals. Clearly the greatest captain Australia never had.

MS Dhoni has one of the best minds in contemporary cricket and can be genuinely inventive. One of my favourite passages of play in recent history was the Nagpur test against Australia in 2008, when Ishant and Zaheer dried up the flow of runs by bowling yorkers a foot outside the off stump, frustrating Australia into a epoch-ending series defeat. Another memorable Dhoni innovation was placing a fielder directly behind the bowler to catch-out a rampaging Keiron Pollard in an IPL final. I haven't worked out how the same cricketing mind bowls Ashish Nehra, or Joginder Sharma, in the last over.

I would love to see captains using more tactical inventiveness in this World Cup. Perhaps the ICC should institute a Spirit of Martin Crowe innovation award, along the lines of the ICC Spirit of Cricket or the Kingfisher fair play awards. If the ICC is not up to the task, this blog could fill the breach.