The Hindu Business Line : The ‘obvious’ lesson from sportspersons

It is not for nothing that most managers look for some history of participation in team sports when screening a candidate. There is no doubt that sports builds character. It helps one get comfortable with teamwork and team spirit; builds leadership qualities (and that is itself a topic for separate analysis); it even helps one to deal with failure and bouncing back.

But I think there is one more important lesson that can be drawn from the lives of sports people — one that is often ignored or at least not explicitly stated.

Think of the names on this list: Brian Lara, Gundappa Visvanath, Vijay Amritraj, Sandeep Patil, Lawrence Rowe, David Gower, Vinod Kambli…

Brian Lara has an awesome record. He has more runs than any other batsman in the history of cricket; he also holds the record for the highest individual innings score. Lara is quite simply a genius, among the very best to have ever wielded a cricket bat.

Visvanath is regarded by many as the best match-winning batsman India has produced, and he was loved by crowds everywhere for his dazzling strokeplay. His unique ability to lift his game in tough conditions for batting puts him in a very special category of greats. In the early 1970s, Vijay Amritraj was bracketed with Bjorn Borg and Connors as being the future of tennis; the ABC of tennis is how Arthur Ashe described them. The others in this list are equally distinguished.

But in most people’s estimation, this list will be seen as one of under-achievers; of players who did not do justice to their God-given talent. The spontaneous reaction would be: “What a genius! But he could have achieved so much more if only he had tried harder or was more consistent or if he had cashed in better.”

Now think of Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Jimmy Connors, Justin Langer, Ivan Lendl, Martina Hingis, Justine Henin, Tiger Woods, Graham Gooch…

In most people’s estimation, this list would be one of successful sportspersons; their careers would be seen as having attained fulfilment. The spontaneous reaction on hearing their names would be: “Wow! They were real performers.”

That really is the essence of success and failure. It is not talent, or genius, or even opportunity. It is the ability to get the best out of oneself in a worthwhile endeavour. It is the basic determination to be the best one can possibly be. It is all about competing with oneself to be as good as possible.

Not all successful sportspersons were blessed with genius. Shastri, Langer, Gooch…these men possessed only above-average talent. But they made the best of that; they figured out how to use their talents to the maximum benefit of their teams and themselves. They were the best players that they could possibly be.

Gavaskar, Connors, Hingis…these people were very talented; to this talent they added a tremendous amount of hard work to achieve exceptional success in their careers. They too were the best players that they could possibly be.

Sachin has been blessed with genius. And he has tempered that genius with humility and hard work. The result is that he is regarded, around the world, as the best batsman since Bradman.

Lara is, and Visvanath was, a genius too. But these men did not flash their genius often enough. Too often, they seemed unwilling to put in the hard work necessary. These two, and the others in the list, perhaps never realised just how talented they were. It is not my argument that these people are failures. By normal standards, they have been spectacular successes, but they have simply not played to their full potential.

We can see such people all around us. The idea person who comes up with one brilliant idea after the other; but never gets around to implementing any of them; the brilliant student who somehow never gets into the top two or three in her class; the undoubtedly capable executive who never plans his work ahead; the dreamer who is always talking about how he just needs a couple of things to work for him to strike it big; and the sourpuss who incisively analyses the failure of every initiative started by others but never starts one herself as she feels deep down she cannot walk her own talk.

Not all the people in the ‘achievers’ list started off that way. Both Gooch and Dravid learnt this lesson midway through their careers and they are testimony that it is never too late to learn the lesson.

Learning lessons

The lesson is essentially the same, but it takes different forms for different people. For Dravid, it involved making a commitment to himself that he would never ever throw his wicket away, and that he would refocus on the task after each batting landmark in an innings. This was why he could convert a 50 to a 100, and a 100 to a double so often.

For Gavaskar, it involved endless hours at the nets refining his technique till he reached the point when a cricket journalist described him as the human textbook. Steve Waugh was the master of the ugly innings; he never worried about whether he was struggling or looking elegant, so long as he made all the runs his team needed.

Each and every one of us has to decide – which list do I belong to today? Am I an achiever, or am I a talented under-achiever? If I am an under-achiever, then do I have the courage to examine myself and pinpoint exactly what is keeping me from achieving whatever I can?

More importantly, we have to decide: which list do I want to belong to? Would I prefer to look back on my stint in a company / career / life itself and say “by God, I tried hard, I developed every talent I had and have no regrets” or “I wish I had tried harder, maybe I could have done this if I had explored more.”

Actually, much of what I have said here sounds like what is commonly described as “obviously!” Each of us has to decide whether to internalise this “obvious” message and implement it or not.

(The writer is the CEO of Kaybase Consulting.)

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