“Captain Cool” And His Team Have Gone Out Of Favour In Less Than 10 Months!

Circa April 2011: India won the cricket world cup in on April 4,l 2011,a lot of flowery words were used to praise the team members , especially the captain ,M.S.Dhoni.Every paper wrote great things about the team and their capabilities and also of the leadership skills of Dhoni.For example, ET dtd April 8,2011, carried a piece titled”Hot Jobs For Captain Cool”.Some of the bigwigs of Indian industry had discussed “what corporate position would be the best fit for strategist, risk taker and man manager MS Dhoni?”Harsh Mariwala of Marico said that given a chance, he would give Dhoni the title of general manager(HR and strategy) citing Dhoni’s decision to bat ahead of Yuvraj Singh in the final with Sri Lanka. Savitha Prasad of Sabre Holdings thought that Dhoni could make it big in both the corporate world and politics.”He would make decisions, get them implemented and make others work as well.That is his personality as a leader”, according to her. Venugopal Dhoot wanted to offer a post of an executive director in his company.According to Dhoot, “Dhoni has all the attributes of a director- leadership skills, and the fact that he can work with different kinds of people and also deliver results”. The brand expert Harish Bijoor felt that Dhoni would be perfect as the head of internal branding in an Indian company.And L.K.Gupta, CMO of LG Electronics is of the opinion that Dhoni would be an ideal CFO of a company as he is already used to handling a lot of money given his endorsements.Manish Sabharwal of TeamLease opined that Dhoni would best fit as HR head of a company.On top of all these, Bringi Dev, Adjunct Professor and Head of communications at IIMB wanted Dhoni to become a guest lecturer at the IIMs as he could teach a variety of subjects like team dynamics, motivational theory and leadership.

And ET of April 10,2011 carried more eulogies of Dhoni and his team members like Sachin and Yuvraj.And also how these lessons can be used well in corporate management.The write up on Dhoni(Leading Change:MS Dhoni) described How Dhoni Transformed Team India. It mentioned 6 steps namely Establishing urgency of change,Building a new coalition from the same members, Creating defined goals, Empowering others to contribute to goals, Aiming for short term wins, Consolidating improvements etc.

In short, captain MS Dhoni and his team were considered to be worthy of being emulated in the corporate equivalent; or corporate felt that they could learn of things from Captain Cool and his team.

Circa January 2012: Barely 10 months after winning the world cup, the Captain Cool and his team seem to have lost out the support. The team lost two test series abroad- one against England in England and another one against Australia in Australia. It was a clean drubbing of the team at both places. And, the innocuous looking cricket aficionados from corporate and business school academics now felt that the Indian team must learn tricks from India Inc(Team India Must Learn Tricks From India Inc, ET,January 30,2012). The ET article mentions about four Turnaround Mantras for the team: Look for a leader with a high level of passion to get things done, Begin succession planning pronto to enable seamless transition from old guard to young turks, Communicate gently but firmly to the legends that there is a problem, Emphasize the virtues of team-work; and what if stars fire but the team loses it’s of no use. And they also felt that it’s time for leadership change. What a turn about in a matter of months! I only feel relieved that no corporate honcho appointed Dhoni in their company.Had he been, he would have been jobless by this time. I also sincerely feel that some of the old war horses must opt for retirement and give way for new talent. But, would that have assured a series win against Australia?

Why this kind of thinking? Isn’t it much of an extension of the current corporate thinking? I believe the following points which have been the main reasons for the lack of corporate performance sustainability can be attributed to the present reaction:

a. Short-termism. People tend to forget that Dhoni is the most successful Indian captain as far as winning series abroad are concerned. Please note that it took 28 years to win another cricket world cup eventhough many considered India had the capacity to win in any world cup after 1983.

b. One mistake or failure erasing all the past successes or nullifying any prospects for future wins.(Thank god, our cricket team is not a listed company; otherwise all the investors would have lost all the money in the last 10 months!!)

c. The assumption that competencies are portable or competencies in sports or games can be replicated in business or other fields by the players. Please note competencies are not even portable across corporate and that a very successful CEO of a company can be a disaster in another company. It brings to mind the story of headhunters short-listing Jack Welch among the potential candidates for heading IBM in 1993 which he refused because while he was highly successful in GE, he might not be so in IBM.

d. Too high expectations about performance. Had we shown a kind of mellowed expectations, and founded it more on reality, the reactions wouldn’t have been so harsh.

5.The fundamental mistake in strategizing – in the corporate market place by looking for market imperfections and extending it to a game of cricket by equating it to a corporate war in the marketplace. By doing so, we are putting too much pressure on the players. Let them perform by enjoying the game of cricket and let’s also enjoy a good game of cricket. I think everybody(including the supporters of Nadal and Djokovich) would have known that only one would win in the Australian Open final or in a match of cricket between two countries, while there can be many winners in corporate wars in the market place.

While one may fully agree that there should be proper planning for replacing the aging players, the comparison with the corporate sector could be out of place. This is because in the corporate sector, very rarely a CEO is replaced just because better talent is available outside or even within. A replacement does not happen in India when performance is mediocre or even poor during a few quarters. And companies and CEOs try to justify the mediocre or poor results by ascribing the same to extraneous reasons rather than blaming themselves for their inactions or wrong actions.

A dig at World Economic Forum(WEF)

It was equally shocking and surprisingly refreshing to see a head of a corporate looking down upon one of the forums of the corporate elite where they join together annually to showcase the unity and of course, the strength of the corporate honchos once a year at Davos in Switzerland. Rajiv Bajaj, CEO of Bajaj Auto and son of the Bajaj group patriarch Rahul Bajaj, in a recent interview is reported to have mentioned that he thinks that “ half of the world’s problems start from the World Economic Forum”(Global woes start at Davos summit, feels Rajiv Bajaj, The Hindu, Jan 4, 2012).He also mentioned that “Everybody has a position in life, my position is anti-management position”. I wholeheartedly congratulate Mr.Rajiv for voicing his opinion from inside the ring because very rarely people try criticize systems when they are they are part of the systems.

Does this comment indicate that all is not well with the Forum and there may be dissenting views about it in the days to come. Outsiders like us always knew that, while the official website of the forum describes it as an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas, it was nothing but a CEO forum to further corporate interests and should have been named “World Corporate Forum “ or “World CEO Forum” as very rarely they discuss issues beyond business. It was one more forum covering the world to assert the role of corpocracy, to use the term coined by Robert Monks, like the Business Round Table(BRT) which is confined to the US.

I was expecting Mr.Rajiv not to mince words during the recent ET Corporate Excellence award function(where he was awarded too) and voice his concerns about the discussion that preceded the event: The Agenda For Renewal. A few high profile corporate helmsmen like Deepak Parekh, Narayana Moorthy, K.V.Kamath, Ashok Ganguly etc gave a number of suggestions to the government. A few of the corporate-friendly ministers attended the function and gave their responses to the various suggestions. I also happened to witness the TV coverage of the award function. What was disgusting about the whole thing was that while the theme was a broad one”Agenda for Renewal”, which should have covered all economic aspects of the nation, it turned out to be “An Agenda for Renewal For The Corporates”. Nobody from outside the industry could be spotted attending the award function.

I feel that Occupy Wall Street movement will soon get extended to India in the form of Occupy Dalal Street since corporate have been taking a very narrow view of economy, ignoring everything other than industry.