The Hindu Business Line : Performance and the cricket fan syndrome

Funny isn’t it? In less than seven months, we seem to have such divergent views about the same set of people? Well, in the game of cricket, fans see no middle path of performance — you are either a hero or a zero. They have such low tolerance to failures. They personalise success and failures so easily. They also tend to go by recent events rather than look at consistency over the long run.

If you thought all this happens to only the fickle-minded cricket fans in India, you are mistaken.

In many ways, this fickle-mindedness — this lack of respect for average performance, the low tolerance for failures, the tendency to personalise success and failure and, finally, the focus on recent events is as much a phenomenon among organisations in India. I call this the cricket fan syndrome. Let’s understand this better.

Lack of respect for the dependable performer

Most fans root for their stars and ignore the rest. So much so, everyone is in a hurry to transcend being an average player and become a star. No different in the world of work.

If your organisation has a five-point rating scale, chances are that most want to be a five or at best a four. Three is considered bad and two horrible.

Organisations often fail to demonstrate respect towards solid and consistent performers — the ones that field well, score some runs, do some useful batting and even bowl when needed. Through our inability to design team-based rewards, our preoccupation with so called “top talent” and our lack of demonstrated respect for solid and dependable performers we have ended up creating a culture where being “average” or “above average” is a sin. We have problems with people who do an honest day’s work and choose to go home in time to pursue other interests. Instead, we celebrate those who go beyond the call of duty to do special projects even if they fail on their core deliverables.

As we add more and more young employees to our workforce and continue to design jobs that are fairly routine by definition, it is hard and even dangerous to focus on the top 20 per cent. It may be prudent to focus on engaging the vast majority of solid performers who stay on, perform and pay back the training investments. By creating a “star culture” you also set yourself up for unreasonable expectations from the stars and place your managers in situations they are so ill equipped to handle.

Low tolerance for failures

Ask any experienced and successful leader and he will tell you that he learnt his best lessons from the mistakes he made and the failures he experienced. While this sounds conceptually right, few managers have the stomach for failures just like our cricket fans.

Many managers tend to “catastrophise” or exaggerate the effect of failures and believe that everything will come to an end in the face of a single failure.

As a result, they become risk-averse and also end up creating a team of people with little resilience to face the hard times.

Given the way performance and reward systems are designed, most managers also end up worrying more about their own performance and future rather than focus on helping their teams win.

Personalising success and failure

When our team wins or loses, fans focus on who is responsible rather than looking at what caused it. Fans adore a few players and abhor others. In the face of success and failure, these biases tend to colour their judgments. Few realise that the whole (team) is more than the sum of the parts (members).

At a time when the GDP is growing at over 9 per cent, it is hard to say whether all the business success can be attributed to great personal contributions or some of it is led by sheer momentum.

More often than not, managers are guilty of personalising success and failure. Especially when things go wrong, managers tend to see “who” rather than look at “what” contributed to it. By personalising failures, managers are robbed of the opportunity to explore real issues such as unity of purpose, clarity of roles, skills required, style of leadership, shared leadership and so on.

Consistency and long-term orientation

When our stars win a match, fans go overboard and raise their expectation about what they can do in the future. On the other hand, when they lose one, they write them off for the future.

Organisations are no different. In the face of recent successes, managers overestimate what their players can do in the future.

In the face of recent failures, managers tend to consider drastic actions. Organisations fail to encourage and reward consistency over time and instead get carried away by flashes of brilliance.

Having said all this, fans are only fans. They are watching things from the stands or the safe confines of their homes. The consequences of their actions and reactions are at best temporary.

Organisations, on the other hand, have a significant influence over the lives of their employees, at least until they decide to leave.

(The author is founder and CEO of totus consulting, a strategic HR Consulting firm. He is also the co-founder of the Executive and Business Coaching Foundation India Ltd and can be reached at ganesh@totusconsulting.com)

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