There but for the grace of you go I

Came across this story in the New Yorker, a profile of a liberal Iranian economist called Mohammed Tabibian. Has stayed in memory because Iran, seen through Tabibian's eyes, reminds me so much of India.

Here are some nuggets that I really liked:

- Tabibian speaks with a lucidity and directness that is startling in a culture marked by allusiveness and elaborate courtesy

- In Iran the spectrum of economic thought, Tabibian joked, "runs from left to left". The so-called convervatives... talk of redistributing Iran's wealth, not of re-structuring its economy

- "The common morality was that if the rich give a part of their wealth to the poor, then the poor will be helped out. Many days and nights, in my imagination and daydreaming, I distributed the wealth of my family to the poor in my neighbourhood. Always my calculation came to the same conculsion: that such an imaginary scheme, even if it happens, makes us poor and the neighbourhood not much better off"

- Tabibian is not bothered by the negative example (of free markets run amok) unfolding in the West. "We are on two different sides of the spectrum. You need more regulation. We need less regulation and government intervention"

- The senior Iranian clergy at Qom "were nice people, gentle people, very concerned about morality and things to come from the other life". Their economic presriptions, however, were vanishingly vague: society should be prosperous, people should not be greedy

- After the Revolution, the Central Bank had only one clear priority, to abolish the interest rate which was deemed un-Islamic. And yet, no matter which policy the Central Bank pursued, interest quickly reappeared. A bank branch in Tehran would place a red car on its roof and announce that all depositers would be entered into a lottery for that car - a strategy that allowed the bank to pay a variable rate of return on its deposits. Bankers even found ayatollahs who would issue fatwas in support of their schemes

- The revolution had made education available to more Iranians. But there was no role for these people in an economy that depended not on productive industries but on the dispensation of oil-rents

All the Shah’s Men?

Was Barack Obama’s tough talk on Iran the kiss of death for the recent protests?

Great question, because it opens up a pivotal passage in history that needs to be resolved before sanity returns to the Middle East. I didn’t know about this until I read All the Shah’s Men. This book, a breeze at 230 pages of comfortably large fonts, is a must read for anyone who has been following the news coming out of Iran over the last few weeks.

The key to understanding Iran, and why any association with America and/or Britain is so toxic in Iranian politics, goes back to 1953.



This was when the CIA sponsored a coup to unseat the secular, liberal, democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, and install Shah Reza Pahlavi in his place. The point of the coup was to retain western control of the oil fields and refineries at Abadan. Mohammed Mossadegh planned to nationalize these oil fields, which were owned and operated by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now known as British Petroleum).

The coup worked for a quarter century, until the Shah was overthrown in 1979 by a people’s revolution that morphed into the Islamic Republic. These events, not much talked about in today's western media, are vividly remembered in the Middle East.

Interestingly, America’s Democrat leaders are well aware of this history:

- Barack Obama referred to the 1953 coup during his historic speech at Cairo University, “For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to my country, and there is in fact a tumultuous history between us. In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government”.

- John Kerry wrote this op-ed piece in the New York Times, “The last thing we should do is give Mr. Ahmadinejad an opportunity to evoke the 1953 American-sponsored coup, which ousted Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and returned Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to power. Doing so would only allow him to cast himself as a modern-day Mossadegh, standing up for principle against a Western puppet”.

Some other interesting nuggets from All the Shah's Men:

- Kermit Roosevelt Jr., Teddy Roosevelt's grandson, was the CIA agent who engineered the 1953 coup

- Norman Schwarzkopf Sr. spoke to the exiled Shah to convince him to return to Iran and take power. His son was the Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. who commanded American forces in Operation Desert Storm in 1991

- Winston Churchill was the British Prime Minister when Mossadegh started moves to nationalize Anglo-Iranian. This felt personal to Churchill, the Admiralty man. Abadan had fueled the Royal Navy through two world wars. Churchill immediately reached out to America for help, and got nowhere with President Harry Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson. The plot to oust Mossadegh really started getting traction when the Eisenhower administration brought the Dulles brothers to the center of power.

Flying through Dulles airport in Washington DC reminds me of the story of Mohammed Mossadegh.

Eoin Morgan and the tragedy of Greame Hick

As I start this post, Ireland have restricted Sri Lanka to 28-2 in 6 overs, after Sri Lanka had scored over 60 in the first 6 against Australia, West Indies and Pakistan. Jayawardene and Jayasuriya are just starting to power away from the Fighting Irish.

I usually back Lanka above all teams except India, but today my heart is with the underdogs. The Irish amateurs playing for pride, taking on the galacticos. If only... if only quality players from Ireland, good enough to make a living playing cricket, were actually playing for Ireland.

Eoin Morgan played for England earlier this year. Admittedly, his only game was England's famous defeat to the Netherlands at Lord's in the opening game of this Twenty20 World Cup. But still, he is good enough to play for England. His first class average is better than either the Irish captain William Porterfield, or their star batsman Niall O'Brien. Ed Joyce is another England international who might have been playing for Ireland today.

How much of a difference would a couple of quality batsmen, or at least better batsmen, make to the Irish run chase today?

The greatest tragedy of this sort was Greame Hick. Playing for England, he was a disappointment. Playing for Zimbabwe, alongside the Flower brothers, Dave Houghton and Eddo Brandes, he might have made the difference between a team capable of making noble gestures and a team capable of winning.



In Hick's time, maybe playing international cricket was the only credible way of making a decent living as a player. Maybe playing county cricket for a lifetime was not ambition enough.

Today, has the IPL changed that dynamic? Hopefully it will. But this generation of the Fighting Irish will have to win with the talent they've got.

Juno

Juno is an outstanding film. It's funny, quirky and cuts as deep as you want it to. Watch it.

This is an old-fashioned movie, a movie with a plot. A monosyllabic dork who runs around in golden shorts gets a sixteen year old pregnant. She is going to have the baby. Complicated situation needs resolution, and that keeps the story-line rolling.

But is that what the movie is about? Naw. In almost all movies worth watching, plot is nothing more than a device that serves to showcase character. What makes the movie is Juno, the title character, brilliantly and authentically played by the twenty year old Canadian actor Ellen Page.

Without giving too much away...Juno is naive, mature, perceptive, cynical, trusting, would love to be wooed by a jock, loves her own dork, is spunky, vulnerable, really into cutting edge music, thinks chemistry lab is kind of cool, just doesn't get her tone-deaf parents, has wonderful parents...she is real.

When Charlie Brown picks up the Little Red Haired Girl's pencil, notices it has been chewed, and beatifically declares "She's human", maybe he is discovering that she is a bit like Juno.

Ideally, Juno, I ain't looking to analyse you, categorize you, or define you, or confine you, all I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you.

But...but Diablo already defined you. By calling you Juno. Not Jane, or Janet, or Jennifer, but Juno. Juno, wife of Jupiter, mother of Mars, Regina of Rome, guardian of the Empire's finances, Lucina (she who brings children to light), spiritual heir to both Hera and Diana. The goddess is back.

Why the IPL works

The IPL, and more generally the Twenty20 format, is producing quality cricket. Commentators who liken the IPL to exhibition cricket or the Harlem Globetrotters are being both unfair and blind. They are simply not observing closely enough.

I'm typing this up the night before the 2009 finals. I just watched my team, the Chennai Super Kings, lose to the Bangalore Royal Challengers. Both teams played hard and produced moments that were as good as anything I've seen in tests. Consider:

- Dravid's immaculate straight drive to welcome Jakati into the attack. It was worth watching the game just to see that one shot

- Murali trapping Dravid LBW bowling around the wicket and straightening the ball into the stumps

- Virat Kohli dancing down to the pitch of the ball and lofting Murali over long on for a match-deciding sixer (the shot in the picture above)

- Parthiv Patel anticipating a short ball from Kallis and upper-cutting him over the slips for four

- Vinay Kumar frustrating Dhoni by bowling very full and outside the off at the death (exactly what Dhoni had Zaheer and Ishant do the the Aussies in the Nagpur test)

Despite the cheerleaders, despite the horrible uniforms, this is the real thing: top quality players competing to win.

Of course, nothing can match test cricket for genuinely memorable drama. But I would have no heartburn about Twenty20 entirely replacing the ODI format.

More generally, sport that has been seriously dumbed-down doesn't seem to sell.

An interesting (and heartening) case in point was the failure of an American Football league, the XFL. It was promoted Vince McMohan, the guy behind WWF wrestling. The idea was to compete with the NFL, despite having second rate players, by having more skimpily clad cheerleaders and morphing the rules to create more "action".

The venture was possibly inspired by the belief that "nobody ever went broke by under-estimating the intelligence of the American public". Well, Mr. McMohan didn't go broke, but he did manage to lose $72 million.

Lord of the Rings: The Appendices

This is the Tolkien trip for the real Tolkien fans. I noted before that the movie was good, but left an old-time Tolkien fan like me a touch unsatisfied, like having eaten half a meal. Now, having watched the extensive appendices which come with the DVD box set, even I am sated, chock full of Tolkien fundas to inflict on the innocent bystander. Here is a sampling of the nuggets that made the appendices totally worth watching: - Rohan is modelled on Saxon culture. The motifs on the armour, the design of the helmets, they are meant to look like artefacts from the famous Saxon burial sites at Sutton Hoo. Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon, the culture which produced Beowulf, and deeply regretted the loss of a “native” English mythology with the coming of the Normans. Rohan was his way of imagining how Saxon culture may have developed if the Battle of Hastings had been won - The tale of Beren and Luthien, of the elven princess who gives up immortality to wed a man, is incidental to Frodo’s quest. But it is probably the most intensely personal element of the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s grave refers to himself as John Ronald Reuel Tolkien Beren, and to his wife Edith, buried alongside, as Edith Mary Tolkien Luthien - The original movie script had Arwen fighting alongside Aragorn at Helm’s Deep. Liv Tyler spent months training to use a sword. Several fight sequences with Arwen were filmed. Then, there was a leak, the bloggers found out, and revolted. They accused Liv Tyler of betraying Tolkien because she wanted to play Xena, the Warrior Princess. The online vitriol was so intense that the bloggers won. The elven host finally showed up at Helm’s Deep without Arwen. Liv Tyler was clearly very upset by this, but it was the right outcome. Well done, bloggers - On the shoot, Viggo Mortensen had the hots for the Rohirrim girls. Not for the gorgeous Eowyn. But for the soldiers who rode with Eomer. They’re babes in drag. Apparently, Viggo was really into these lithe, lissom, helmeted ladies, wearing beards and carrying spears. This was gleefully reported by Dominic Monaghan, who plays Merry, and later denied by Viggo - At the party to celebrate victory at Helm’s Deep, Legolas drinks Gimli under the table. That’s what happens in the movie. In real life, Orlando Bloom passes out at the merest whiff of alcohol. In Dominic Monaghan’s words “Orlando is so pure, his breath smells of flowers”. The appendices have enough room to acknowledge, and even enrich, Tolkien’s vast Middle Earth. And they also open up another vast world, the world of Peter Jackson’s film project. Watching the appendices, you’re an insider to one of the biggest films ever made. If you’re the sort of person who has ever dreamt about wearing an elven cloak and canoeing down the Anduin with the fellowship, the appendices are a must watch.

Dissociative Identity Leadership

Companies are like people. Other things being equal, companies which do well believe in themselves. They carry vivid images of victory, they fiercely belive success is their destiny. On the other hand, companies which fret about failure usually succumb to the fielding flu and fail.

Yet, the opposite is also true. My friend Greg Pye, the famous and profound management philosopher, writes here about the importance of staring into the abyss and looking for ways in which things can fail. This is an essential part of planning, both for putting defences (or plan Bs) in the right place and in setting expectations.

Balancing these necessary evils, faith and scepticism, is one of the hardest and most universal problems of leadership. Every healthy organization needs this split personality, or dissociative identity.



The simplest solution is to locate these faculties, and the associated sub-cultures, in different departments. This works fine in organizations of thousands of people, despite the friction between departments. But it is hard to do on a smaller scale, say at a cricket club or on a film crew.

The Six Thinking Hats technique popularized by Edward do Bono is also useful. It involves containing the sceptical imagining of failure within a contained area, called Black Hat thinking, before moving on to creative Green Hat thinking or optimistic Yellow Hat thinking.

My discontent with the Six Thinking Hats is with the assumption that faith - that sense of destiny - is the product of thought. It is not. It is an emotion. It is produced by thought, sure, but also by a whole lot else. I find that the more useful way of balancing faith and scepticism is to remain rooted in the emotional state of faith, even while working through the cognitive process of scepticism.

PS: John Kotter essentially wishes away this problem by labeling the faculty of faith as Leadership and the faculty of scepticism as Management. This is worse than useless, because "leaders" are paid a lot more than "managers". This tilts the playing field away from scepticism, and exagerrates the natural cognitive bias towards optimism.

PPS: The original title for this post was Schizophrenic Leadership. But wikipedia tells me that, despite the etymology, Schizophrenia is not about split personalities. It is about distorted perceptions of reality, typically hallucinations. People with split personalities have a dissolute identity disorder.

Another characteristic of great leaders... learning all the time :)