MSDhoni - The Leader

I grew up watching Sachin and learning how to be modest in spite of having the best skills endowed by God and adulated by billions, l learnt from Saurav how to survive and build a strong spine while facing the mightiest but become a matured person only after following you dear Dhoni. Sometimes, I wonder if you are the complete definition of leadership. You relinquished this and handed over the baton to a field marshal who himself considers you his captain for lifetime . This is what leadership is all about. The cricketing world would never forget the calm demeanour of yours. Difficult to count on how many occasions you took our breath away with last over heroics and come out smiling as if nothing has happened. As long as you were there, nothing seems to be impossible. Your way of playing was unorthodox but you had the most uncluttered mind. You lead only when  leading was needed and with you on top victory become the habit. ... cheers to you for giving the many happy moments to the fellow countrymen. Please continue to play ... get back in your long hairs and show us again the youthful vintage Dhoni for a few more years.... we will miss the leader ....

Mediocrity in organisations

Although, it is an antithesis but having very strong emphasis on processes in organisations leads to mediocrity. The more and more maturity it attains around its process, the focus from talent and hence creativity and innovation fades away. The structure becomes more and more centrist and rigid, rendering individuals below to become lazy with non-critical thinking attitude. The mediocrity develops survival syndrome in stead of innovation and creativity. In addition, survival syndrome creates more nepotism, noise and less solution orientation. Eventually , the firm either dies due to breathlessness of incompetency or stagnates due to lack of creative energy. This is the reason,Why some of the biggest and long lasting organisation are always in look out for acquisition because over the period of time, in order to run the monolithic structure it becomes too process centrist. Only way left is to get external forces to drive the innovation and creativity. The growth path of start ups are steeper because all the time, the guys there are thinking for newer ideas without any inhibition. There is always a healthy competitiveness in the air, where everyone is trying to outpace others with his thought process. The domains are not confined to boundaries and decision making is not caged in hierarchy and expertise. The people flow in the organisation like a river water with gay abandon. The spaces are occupied with natural thinkers, not the survivors. Those who are above average thrives in this situation and don't need any other kind of motivation to remain engaged. On the other hand as the organisation grows, the need for processes becomes important to have control and remain synthesized. Perhaps, a starting point of bureaucracy and impetus to mediocrity. The creatives start feeling suffocated and general tendency to keep status-co becomes routine.

This was an ideal situations over a decade ago, when after maturity, flattening of the curve was a normal thing. But is not any more. Advent of technology from unknown corners and arrival of entrepreneurs from anywhere is a norm. It's very difficult to predict the competition and just in a matter of few months or years , the organisations become a failure case study in MBA schools. It becomes a research topic. In reality, the inability of organisation to think through and think long is the reason. The bigger culprit is the mediocrity which invariably believes in status quo, safer and risk aversion and for that tries to kill any new thinking on the horizon. The exodus of the creatives leads to the strengthening of this class and weakening of the organisation capacity to do critical analysis.

Then how do the organisation should keep themselves from slowly getting into this trap? Perhaps a little bit of looking back, introspection about the resources at the disposal. A simple test could be taken to find out how many people with generic skills are there is organisation. General management is not a bad thing but organisation needs good number of specialist . How many new process, product has been introduced in last one quarter and how it has been developed.... is it by design or by virtue or by higher engagement of employees? All these analysis can give an idea where the organisation is heading to.

Has the organisation become too ritualistic where the puja can be performed by anyone or it needs a specialist pundits to do that? If the answer is yes then the organisation has got into mediocrity for sure. It is not going to attract right talent and it's time to shakeup, breakup or acquisition as it is no longer thinking on its own. Don't let mediocrity kill it before the normal death.