Sachin and Lara

8/9/2019 Sachin and Lara

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For Private Use Only Strictly Confidential

Preface

Dear Member,

The following paper is a compilation of the discussion we had at Marina beach theprevious Sunday. I have made an attempt to provide the same as an with headings for

coherence. This paper is strictly meant for Private Use of the members only. This

paper is not an academic or research paper and hence you are advised not to quote

anything outside. The objective of the paper is to provide a summary of what has been

discussed. This means that the topic is still open for debate in the online forum.

The topic for the discussion was Sachin Vs Lara. Though the topic does not seem to

be intellectual, and seems to be something that has been discussed over for so many

years, the SIT sat down to think and understand the various possible connotations thatone could make out of the two personalities and a comparison between the two. The

objective of the discussion was not to conclude who is a better player, but whatpossible threads can be pulled out and learnt from this topic. The objective was the

learning using the debate!

Date: 28/ 12/ 08

Venue: Gandhi Statue, Marina Beach, Chennai

Participants

1. Srinath Varadarajan2. Prashanth Krishnaswami3. Rajaraman Subramanian4. Aparajith Jayaraman5. Shreekanth Mahendiran6. Harish Sampath Kumar7. Srinath Veeraraghavan8. Akshaya Shankar9. Vivek Shivram10.Varun Swaminathan11.L.Vidya Shankar12.

Dijo Philip Mathew

13.AravindRegards,

Srinath Varadarajan

Member, SIT


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Sachin Vs Lara

The discussion began with each member providing his views on who his/her choice

would be and why he/she chose the particular player over the other. The variousarguments that were placed for Sachin Tendulkar were as follows:

single minded aggression (not in words, but in action) his consistency his ability to handle pressure

The various arguments for Lara were as follows:

better team player and captain, stylish greater endurance better temperament gentleman approach

Sachin & Lara after scaling yet another zenith in their illustrious careers:


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Group Dynamics

With respect to the individuality of the player, it was argued on one hand that Sachin

was playing for himself over his team most of the time. On the other hand, It wasargued that a team is just a collection of members and all individual performances add

up to group performance on the whole. Hence Sachin did his part well.

The SIT further extrapolated the same, to think further into the varying aspects of

group dynamics. The following figure explains the group dynamics as discussed:

Figure 1: Group Dynamics

Group Goals

Synergy

Full potential

exercised?

Trade off with

priority setting

Achieve Goals


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Under the synergy concept in management, synergy is a phenomenon where the

effort of the GROUP of individuals in the organization is higher than the arithmetictotal of the individual efforts taken. It is a phenomenon where 1+1+1+1+1 is not 6,

but 600! However that synergy occurs only when the individual aspirations matchwith the group aspirations and everybody contributes to full potential. If however, full

potential is not extracted, synergy cannot be achieved. This could be one of thereasons why we see a class performer like Sachin performing in a match while the

teams performance is still not up to the mark.

However, to achieve group goals, it is not always necessary that everybody has to

perform to full potential. A good group dynamics is also when a trade off is when by

individuals to sustain the group performance and results. Reference was made to the

famous Oscar winning movie The Beautiful Mind on the Nobel Prize Winning

Mathematician and Economist John Nash where John Nash sits at a table in the pub

with his friends when a group of girls enter the premises. Nashs friends decide to try

for one blonde pretty girl and one friend says:

Every man for himself. Dont you remember Adam Smith The best results

of a group come when every individual does what is best for himself.

Nash thinks for a while and later comes up with one of todays path breaking theories.

He says thus,

What if nobody went to the blonde girl at all? The others look down on him

when he explains further If we all go for that blonde girl, each one fights

with each other and makes sure that the other doesnt get the girl, hence we

land up with no one getting the girl. We then go to her friends, but they would

never want to be second choices, hence we land up getting nothing! But what

if we never went to the blonde girl in the first place, and we go directly to her

friends? We will all get a girl and none will lose at the end. Hence Adam

Smith was wrong, the best results come when every individual does what is

best for himself and what is best for the group!

The Movie The group dynamics where the blonde girl is left out


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This is one of the major reasons why we see some players letting go of their centuries

so that the team can declare and proceed for a potential victory. This concept is alsovery evident in organizational politics where trade offs and wholesome compromises

are required for sustainability. At home, even for watching television, we find parentstrading off their individual and watch a show that everyone at home can watch. This

makes sure that no one in the household, especially the kids is dejected.

This is also where the concept of priority setting comes to play. When objectives are

to be met, there is always a trade off of some kind that is required and at different

situations we have different kinds of trade offs. However, for every gain there is a loss

(may or may not be the measure) that we tend to make and we call them trade offs.

The intensity of the trade offs determines the decision to be taken and hence the

concept of priority takes shape where objectives are prioritized. Hence in a team

game, it is essential that the team results need to get prioritized and hence the

individual milestones or objectives have to get traded off to an extent where there is a

win-win situation for both the individual and group objective.


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Celebrity Credibility

Another observation that came up in the discussions was the charisma that SachinTendulkar holds that instils the he is there with us positive attitude in the team

members. Reference was made to the Mumbai Indians (IPL team)s performance afterSachin entered the series after an injury and the teams morale went up with just the

Sachin is there with us, why worry! sentiment !

Sachin Leading Mumbai Indians

This concept is very essential to understand as the same can be applied to a lot of

situations the immediate of which is in the field of marketing and advertising where

the celebrity factor plays a major role. The fact that someone whom you respect or

someone who you can count on is with you, pushes you further in performance. Thiscan also be seen in sports where the players mother / father accompanies him for

every match/game.

The celebrity credibility concept is also applicable in situations where in case of apossible product failure, the companys CEO comes on public and assures that it is of

quality and he uses the same too!

The celebrity factor is not linked to personalities alone. It can also be linked to brand

value where some of us tend to go for the branded merchandise as we assure

ourselves of the quality and the reduction of the possible failure.


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The Pressure Situation

In the discussion, another point that was thrown up was the pressure factor thatdifferentiates Sachin and Lara. It was argued that Sachin is faced with a lot more

pressure from his countrymen as compared to Lara. However, another groupcontended that Lara faced more pressure because greats such as Vivian Richards,

Garry Sobers, Desmond Haynes, Clive Lloyd, etc had set enormous targets for him to

break. Sachin, on the other hand did not have any other great comparable to him, at

least not in his own time. A Sunil Gavaskar the group contended, is not comparable to

a Vivian Richards and Sachin ended up raising the bar on his own.

From this thought, one could relate to the fact that pressure could be both peer

pressure and one based on expectations. Another discussion was whether pressure by

itself leads one to high performance. Though pressure is a catalyst, one could not say

pressure by itself leads to high performance since we have seen several instanceswhere people have been bogged down by pressure and they have failed miserably.

Hence, one could conclude that though pressure is a catalyst, what moves a person tohigh performance and success is his character and attitude to handle the pressure and

perform and deliver every time.


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Strategy The captain

One argument against Sachin was that he was not a good captain while compared toLara. While everyone agrees how great a strategist Sachin is with his shots, timing,

penetrating the field, intimidating the bowler at the right time, etc., and he is a rolemodel for everyone in the team and in the country, why then is he claimed to be a bad

captain?

Lara and Sachin with their individual strategies that made them very unorthodox

On introspection, the thought was linked to the concept of individual vs group

strategy. Individual strategy would deal with identifying ones strengths, weaknesses,performance levels, growth, etc. But group strategy would involve a lot more as it is

about identifying, using, translating into the performance the right person at the righttime and in the right situation. The real test of a leader would be more than knowing

his teammates from what they say but along identify by observation, imagination,empathy, experimentation, etc. There is a lot of difference between knowing a

person and understanding a person and studying a person and applying a person

and motivating a person and bonding with a person. While as an individual player

and strategist you would not really need all these factors, you would need it ten times

as a leader. This would mean knowing about a teammate more than what he knows

about himself, giving him solutions to problems he has thought about and also to

those he has never thought of.

Hence, one would find that though in terms of individual accomplishments, Sachin

would be better than Lara, in terms of leadership, Lara would be better off. However,

both would not stand a chance against Stephen Fleming who is undoubtedly the best

captain New Zealand ever had and probably one of the best in the world though hisindividual performance can nowhere be compared to that of Sachin or Lara.


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Coming to the role model question, one has to probably look at from the 80-20

perspective that is used in labour management. Under this concept, the labour force inan organisation can be divided into the top 20, the middle 60 and the low 20

percentages respectively. The top 20% are the genius performers whereas the bottom20 percent are the low performers. Under the management strategy, it is not suggested

to hold on to or even depend on both the top 20% because they have highmarketability and can single handedly handle situations and would not even require a

team. They may not be team players though their performances will be valuable. The

bottom 20% are not going to perform anyway. The thrust is on the middle 60% as

they have a greater scope for improvement, that they will be loyal, more cognizant by

the team as one among them and therefore, can be motivated more.

Though it would not be right to say that he is a not a team player and he never cared

about the team, one could possibly contend that he was a class apart that it was

difficult for the team to relate to as he might not have been one among them and

just another person. He was, indeed, more like a demigod than a leader.


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Talent Vs Character

The topic then took a new shape with a round of discussion on talent vs character.What leads to success ? Talent or character ?. It was argued that talent is everything

and it alone can lead to success on one hand, and on the other, it was argued thattalent is a spark while character is what changes it into action.

Talent is a gift that everyone possesses and that gets the individual into a team and

provides us with a competitive advantage. However the consistency and sustainability

is provided by character which, in turn, includes practice, temperament, attitude,

patience, etc. To put in a nutshell, talent is what gets you there while character is

what keeps you going.

A simple formula for the same would be Talent + Practice + Character + Attitude =

Success!


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What did we learn?

1. Individual attitude to translate to group dynamics and results requires synergyby exploiting the full potential of the individuals. This however requiresconstant motivation.

2. Group dynamics also requires a trade off which is effected by priority settingand objectives. Hence at certain times, we have to trade off certain things to

meet objectives.

3. Celebrity credibility is a powerful tool of motivation, performance andmarketing.

4. Pressure both by way of expectations and peer pressure does not lead toperformance. It is the attitude and the character to work under pressure that

achieves goals.

5. Strategy that an individual applies for himself is different from strategy for agroup. It involves identifying the right person for the right thing at the right

situation and timing. This involves a lot more factors and leadership qualities.6. A leader has to be more than a performer. He has to be one among the team

where all can relate to.7. Talent is a gift that gets a person into something but it is the character that

sustains and it pushes him forward. Hence Success = Talent + Practice +Character + Attitude

Sachin and Lara

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