by Prakash Iyer
So match after match, when a penalty kick is taken, goalkeepers around the world dive. And inevitably fail to stop a goal from being scored. When standing still could perhaps spell success!
What’s true for goalkeepers is true for many of us too. We get conditioned by our bias for action. We get restless, we feel compelled to act. Standing still is seen as a sign of weakness. Inaction is generally not looked upon favourably. We fall prey to the action bias and feel compelled to choose between two alternative paths. In reality, it might have helped had we created option three: Stand still!
And this happens all the time. Take advertising for instance. Some of the most memorable advertising campaigns have been stopped prematurely to be replaced by newer campaigns that just don’t have the same magic. Why? Perhaps because some young brand manager fears that if he continues with the campaign and sales plummet and shares drop, he’ll be hanged for not doing anything. However, if he ran a new campaign and sales dropped … Well, at least he did something, didn’t he?
This irresistible urge explains why fund managers churn the portfolio so regularly. It also explains CEO behaviour. Notice how CEOs are always busy—acquiring a new business, divesting something, upsizing or downsizing, decentralizing operations, pulling the strings back into the head office launching new brands, or killing old ones. Chances are, the businesses would be better off if the CEOs actually choose the elusive option: Doing nothing.
It’s good for all of us to remember the lesson from the research on penalty kicks, and stop thinking like goalkeepers usually do. While a bias for action is good to have (good goalies are forever diving and making spectacular saves), in several situations it pays to just stand still.
Doing nothing can sometimes be the best thing you can do!
At times, standing still is the best action you can take!
Of Sharks, Pepsi and the Comfort Zone
If there were a travel advisory aimed specifically at leaders, there’s one place they would be strongly advised against entering: the Comfort Zone.
Getting complacent, feeling invincible and floating in the comfort zone of ‘been there, done that’ can deflate not just an individual but an entire organization, resulting in a rapid decline in individual and team performance. Cruise control may be a fabulous feature in cars and aeroplanes but it can be quite a spoiler in human beings.
Successful people constantly prod themselves out of the comfort zone—by posing new challenges, by constantly raising the bar, by changing contexts. Steve Waugh, former Australian cricket captain, who so successfully pushed himself and his team to consistently perform at the peak, called his autobiography Out of the Comfort Zone. Competition, the threat of defeat, the prospect of winning and the looming figure of a competitor can all ensure that you avoid getting stuck in the comfort zone.
In the corporate world, the cola wars probably best exemplified this phenomenon. In India, for instance, both Coke and Pepsi built up passionate teams—armies, in fact—where the vision was as much about finishing off the enemy as it was about gaining market share. Given the nature of the business, there was no time to rest on laurels. Victory and defeat were decided every moment in nondescript stores in far-flung towns across the country—every time a consumer walked up and asked for a cola. You were only as good as the last bottle sold. The presence of a strong competitor meant that the entire sales organization had a unique passion, a fire-in-the-belly approach imprinted in its corporate DNA. There used to be a line attributed to a planner in Coke’s headquarters that probably summed it up: ‘If there were no Pepsi, we would have had to invent it!’
R. Gopalakrishnan, former vice chairman of Hindustan Unilever and currently executive director of Tata Sons, narrates an interesting story in his book, The Case of the Bonsai Manager. It’s about fish in Japan. And the message is relevant for individuals and corporates around the world.
It’s a classic problem–solution saga that the Japanese love to relate. As is well known, the Japanese love fresh fish. Such has been Japan’s fascination with eating fresh fish that, for many years now, there’s hardly any fish to be found in the waters off Japanese shores. So fishermen came up with a solution. They built bigger boats and went farther from the shore to catch fish. Unfortunately, this created another problem. The farther they went to fish, the longer it took them to get back to the shore. By the time they got back, the fish was stale. And the Japanese, well, they like their fish fresh.
To solve this problem, the fishermen came up with another solution. They installed refrigeration units on the boats. But the Japanese were clearly clever, discerning folks. They could tell the difference between frozen fish and fresh fish. And they wanted their fresh fish. Besides, frozen fish commanded lower prices, threatening the viability of the entire fishing business.
So the fishermen came up with another solution. They installed fish tanks on the boat! They would catch fish from the sea and put them into the tank. So they could now take back fresh fish!
But that was not to be either. As the tank got stuffed with fish, the fish would flap around a bit, then get lazy and lie resigned to their fate. Motionless. Inactive. Dull. And the Japanese could tell the difference. They wanted fresh fish, not sluggish fish!
Even as a seemingly insurmountable crisis loomed over the Japanese fishing industry, the wise fisherfolk came up with yet another innovative solution. They still had to sail out a long distance. And they still had the same boats and the same fish tanks. But there was one difference. In each tank, the fishermen put in a small shark. The shark kept the fish active, running around, busy. Sure, the shark ate a few fish but the threat of the shark kept the other fish active and healthy. The challenge ensured that none of them could afford to lie still. As a result, what eventually reached the shore was fresh, active fish. And the Japanese loved it!
We are like fish too. We need that shark to stay sharp. In case you or your organization is slowly slipping into the comfort zone, it may be a good idea to bring in a shark. If you are Coke, invent a Pepsi. Do what Steve Waugh did constantly to himself and his team—get outta the comfort zone! Remember, the shark may eat some fish but that’s a small price to pay for keeping the rest of them active. Get your shark. Today!
Get out of the comfort zone. If there’s no enemy, create one.
Taking for Granted:
Lessons from F Words!
Take this simple test. Read the sentence below, and see how many Fs you can find:
FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTI-
FIC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.
So how many did you count? Three? Four? Or five? If you counted six, congratulations. You are a genius. In fact, you’ve done as well as an average seven-year-old.
Truth is that when this test is administered to grownups, less than 5 per cent get it right. (And some among them have probably seen this before!) There are indeed six Fs. And here they are, highlighted for you!
FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIF-
IC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.
So why do adults get it wrong, while kids can get it right in a jiffy? Experts reckon it’s got to do with the way the adult mind gets conditioned to reading the F sound. Our minds tend to miss the F in ‘of’. It’s there but several years of reading fast—and latching on to F sounds in words like ‘finish’ and ‘files’, and missing it in words like ‘of’—result in adults not counting the Fs accurately. In trying to read faster, we notice a few Fs and miss out on the others, which our minds take for granted.
If you think about it carefully, it’s not just F words that we take for granted. There are several things in our lives that our conditioned minds miss out on. As we spend all our waking hours chasing Fame and Fortune (Ah, F words again!), there are some other Fs that we take for granted, ignore, lose sight of …
Like Friends. Family. Faith. And Fun!
They are there, all the time. But in our scramble for Fast cars and Fast cash and Fame and Fortune, the mind loses sight of them. Important as they may be, the mind takes them for granted. And ignores them.
Perhaps it’s time to bring back the innocence of a seven-year-old. Time to rediscover our real strengths. And as you notch up the points for Fame and Fortune in your personal balance sheet, it may be a good idea to check the real score. And look hard for those other Fs—Family, Friends, Faith, Fun—that are there but probably being taken for granted.
Years of neglect and of being taken for granted may make these Fs hard to spot but they are there. Waiting to be seen. And savoured.
So the next time you look at yourself, count the Fs carefully. And never mind how many you can count the first time, remember there are many, many more.
Friends, family, faith and fun—these are just some of the things in our lives that our minds take for granted and get conditioned to miss out on.
Handling Pressure: The Irfan Pathan Way
When you are under pressure, what do you think of most?
The cause of the pressure, right? Under pressure, what does your mind focus on? Your shortcomings? Failures? When faced with the challenge of walking on a thin log across a stream, why can we think only of falling into the water?
We can all benefit from learning to put things in perspective, particularly when we are under pressure. There’s a lesson to be learnt in this from Irfan Pathan, the Indian pace bowler who journeyed from poverty to superstardom to failure to survival to success … All in quick succession. How does he handle pressure? To find the answer, let’s fly across to The Gabba in Brisbane.
It was the second final of the Commonwealth Bank Series 2008. India versus Australia. India had won the first game, and powered by yet another fabulous knock from Tendulkar (91 runs off 121 balls), India had posted a competitive 258 in 50 overs—a score that gave them a fighting chance of registering a rare series win against the world’s number one team.
In reply, Australia didn’t start too well. After a miserable score of 8 for 2, and then 32 for 3, the middle order led a spirited rally to take the game to the wire. With one over left, the equation was tantalizing—6 balls to go, 13 runs to get. And two wickets in hand.
Dhoni and the think tank deliberated on who should bowl the last over. India’s pace spearhead, Sreesanth, had bowled well, totting up 2 for 43 from 9 overs, and looked the obvious candidate. Instead, the skipper threw the ball to Irfan.
Now, Irfan had had an ordinary day. Pretty much like the season itself—and questions were being asked about whether he truly deserved a place in the team. Irfan had proved to be the most expensive of India’s bowlers in the game, his 6 overs yielding 51 runs. And no wickets. Not quite the figures that give you confidence to bowl the last and decisive over. Irfan was clearly a man under pressure.
If you are a cricket fan, you probably remember what happened next. First ball to James Hopes, batting on 60, looking like guiding Australia to a win … A single. Second ball: Irfan strikes and Nathan Bracken is gone, caught by Piyush Chawla in the deep. But luckily for Australia, Hopes crosses over and takes strike. Four balls to go, 12 to get. Third ball: Hopes gets 2 runs. Now, 10 runs needed. Three balls to go. Fourth ball: Pathan strikes again. Hopes goes and, as commentators delighted in remarking that day, with that crashed Australia’s ‘Hopes’!
In the post-match interview, a TV reporter asked Irfan about the pressure he felt when he came on to bowl that last over. What was he thinking? Irfan’s reply was revealing. He said that as he went up to bowl, he thought of his childhood, of the days when his father—a lowly paid muezzin in the local mosque—struggled to feed the family. He thought of the stress his parents went through trying to get his sister married. That he said was pressure. Real pressure. What did he have to do? Simple. Just bowl 6 balls and not give away 13 runs … Surely that’s no pressure, he said to himself!
We could all learn from Irfan how to put things in perspective. Under pressure, it’s easy to focus on the problem at hand, and feel burdened. Overwhelmed. We could instead think of how blessed we are, and think of the others who may not be as lucky. That would help take the mind away from the problem. Make it seem almost trivial. And help us perform to the best of our abilities.
Whatever the mind focuses on tends to grow. Think of your problems, and they will seem to grow bigger. Focus on your strengths, and they will seem to get magnified too. As always, the choice is yours.
When faced with the challenge of walking on a thin log across a stream, make sure your mind does not get filled with thoughts of falling into the water.
How Much Is Hundred Rupees?
In the days when everyone was talking about layoffs and zero bonuses and plunging stock markets, I was reminded of a story that encapsulates our tendency to behave somewhat irrationally when it comes to money.
Imagine that you are in a store, buying a watch. You like the brand and the design. The strap is just right, and at Rs 899, it fits your budget. You decide to pick it up but just as you are about to pay for it, you bump into a dear friend. He notices the watch and tells you that he’s seen the same watch in the store across the road—priced at Rs 799. A whole hundred rupees lower!
What would you do? Most of us, I suspect, would walk across to the other store, and save hundred rupees. Why spend Rs 899 when you can get the same watch for Rs 799? Makes perfect sense.
Now, imagine another scenario. You are at a store buying an expensive Swiss watch. You like the brand, and the design. It’s priced at Rs 247,900. And you decide to pick it up. Just as you are about to pay for it, you bump into a dear friend. He tells you that the same watch is available at a store across the road for Rs 247,800. A whole hundred rupees lower!
What would you do? Like most people, you would probably stay put and buy it there at the same store. After all, what’s hundred rupees when you are spending some 250,000 rupees?
It’s quite strange actually. The truth is that the value of hundred rupees to an individual is—and should be—the same, independent of whether at that moment you are spending Rs 899 or Rs 247,900.
But we tend to get carried away by an unrelated metric. How much we are spending at a given moment affects our perception of the money being saved. If saving hundred rupees matters to you, it should matter to you independent of whether you are spending 1000 rupees or 100,000 rupees. We all need to learn to value the small stuff, those hundred-rupee notes, independent of how much we spend. In times of abundance, it’s good to be cautious. It may just help stretch the abundance a bit.
Getting money to work for you is no different from getting people to work for you. If you don’t treat your money (or your people) with respect, it (they) will leave you. And when the slowdown hits—as it inevitably will—those who valued those hundred rupees even while they were spending big, will find themselves better placed to tide over the difficult times.
I recall a powerful case study they taught at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. It was the first class in the marketing elective taught by the late Professor Labdhi Bhandari. It was a one-page case involving two companies caught up in a price war. So what should the company do, asked the professor. What strategies should it adopt to stay competitive? Cut costs, came the reply from one of the students. And then, the classic response from Professor Bhandari: ‘Cost cutting is not a strategy. It is an imperative. Don’t wait for competition or for troubled times to launch cost-cutting initiatives. Cut costs at all times.’
Wise words those, which ring true to this day.
Clearly, it pays to value that hundred-rupee note. In times good and bad.
In times of abundance, it’s good to be cautious. It may just help stretch the abundance a bit. If hundred rupees matters to you, it should matter to you independent of whether you are spending 1000 rupees or 100,000 rupees.
Of Balloons and People
A friend of mine runs a luxury car dealership in Coimbatore. He told me an inter
esting story about the salespeople in his showroom, and their instinctive responses when a customer walks in. They get excited when they see a well-dressed, seemingly affluent person walk into the store. Quick to sense a kill, all of them converge on him. They offer him coffee (and would the missus like a Pepsi?) and, since he seems to ‘relate to them’, the conversations tend to be long and animated.
However, when a seemingly regular guy, in a dhoti and a loose white shirt walks in, looking as if he parked his bicycle outside and is looking for directions, no one displays any interest. Why waste time—that’s probably the thought playing on their minds. They let the watchman handle him and point him to the post office—if that’s what he is looking for!
But here’s the interesting bit. Years of minding the store have taught my friend that, more likely than not, it is the ordinary-looking guy in the dhoti who will actually end up buying a car! He’s probably got wads of currency notes stuffed into the pockets of his shorts, under his dhoti. The well-dressed, good-looking couple was probably just looking for an air-conditioned place to cool off a bit before heading back to some more window shopping!
Which is why, this is the first lesson my friend imparts to new members of his sales team: Never judge a customer by his appearance.
Years of mental conditioning have made us all think a bit like those salesmen. We tend to judge people by their external manifestations, the way they speak, the way they dress. Sure, first impressions are important but it’s even more important to ensure that we don’t get carried away.
Some of the smartest, brightest colleagues I have worked with have been shy and quiet and apparently easy to miss. No big talk, no fanfare. Just good minds, the willingness to work hard and a can-do attitude. The shirt is not always tucked in properly, the blue socks don’t quite go well with the beige trousers, the heavy accent often jars. But hidden beneath all of that is a real treasure—a teammate you could bet your life on!