Loud Thinking

Archive for January, 2014

Media has reported that PCB has called back unfit Umar Gul from the UAE and Muhammad Sami is being sent as his replacement.

One wonders what for they selected and sent Talha for the Test team and why a 16 member squad is required for a 3 matches series?

What to Do When Communication Styles Don’t Match

When good communicators fail to actually hear each other, it’s often due to a mismatch of styles: to someone who prefers to vent, someone who prefers to explain seems patronizing; explainers view venters as volatile. Remember that your conversational partners do have something important to tell you – even if they’re not communicating it well. While they talk, focus on their left eye. Remain patient. After they finish talking, say to a venter, “I can see you’re really frustrated”; to an explainer, say, “I can see that you really had a lot that you had to say.” Then continue, with either type of communicator, to reframe the conversation by defining practical long-term, short-term, and ASAP follow-up steps. Handling the conversation this way will enable you to remain cool, calm, collected, and communicative.

Adapted from “How to Listen When Your Communication Styles Don’t Match” by Mark Goulston.

“You may be whatever you resolve to be. Determine to be something in the world and you will be something. “I cannot,” never accomplished anything; I will try,” has wrought wonders.”

J. Hawes –

“I follow four dictates: face it, accept it, deal with it, then let it go.”

— Sheng Yen

Asad Shafiq c Silva b Lakmal 13 59 2 0 22.03

Misbah-ul-Haq* c Sangakkara b Herath 135 306 16 1 44.11

Asad Shafiq’s strike rate of 22.03, wasted almost 10 overs for just 13 runs and MUH’s strike rate of 44.11 against the worlds most weak bowling proves that both them just played for themselves and not for the team.

I wonder how these selfish batsmen will fare against Jhonson, Dale Steyn, B Kumar and Shami Ahmad’s calibre bowlers..!

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something. So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make new mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.”

Neil Gaiman (born 1960);
Author

Update Your Job Search for 2014

While many of us have been hunkered down waiting for the recession to pass, the job market has been changing. To succeed in a transformed job market, know what you’re really worth. Research the salary you can realistically command — it may, unfortunately, be less than you expect. (The recession led to little or no increase in pay; there was actually wage deflation during this period.) Helpful resources are PayScale and Glassdoor. If you want to be sure, ask a headhunter or talk to people in your professional association. Next, make sure you’re not using old-fashioned search techniques. In the last five years, job boards have been going the way of newspaper ads. Now, recruiters proactively use social media to identify potential candidates instead of waiting for resumes to come in. If you don’t have a social media presence — on LinkedIn, Twitter, or your own website — you may not get noticed.

Adapted from “Update Your Job Search” by Priscilla Claman.

Happy New Year 2018 – To All the Indians

New Year Resolution – From Pakistan With Love 💖 to All the Indians..!

While wishing all the Indians a very happy, peaceful and prosperous new year 2018, we would like to inform everyone in India that if at all, we have to be friends, then that friendship must be in true sense; and we must not act and behave with each other, in a hypocritical manner.

We Pakistanis would also like to assure the Indians that even if we wanted, we can’t conquer India. At the same time even if India wanted, it can’t pull down Pakistan, without India being destroyed, as well.

So, why to waste our time and energies in an imaginary hatred policies?

Why to waste our precious resources, in being the prisoners of our foolish past?

From the first day of the new year 2018, let us bury our bitter past and be friends in true sense, like all the European countries.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Let us have a genuine peace. Let India remove all its strike forces from the border without any fear. Let us join hands to wage a war against poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy. Let us turn this subcontinent into a bastion of peace and a heaven on earth.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

India and Pakistan just need a period of single decade of genuine peace, to turn around its fortunes to emerge as the most potent economic and cultural power-house of this world.

The only condition is the genuine and authentic peace, like the one which exists in between the EU countries.

Why India and Pakistan should live for decades like divided Korea? Why both the countries can not live like united Europe?

Europe which was so divided that its residents fought two world wars; but now when sense has prevailed, Europeans are reaping the dividends of peace.

Now, when both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers, conquering one other is out of question, without Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).

As such, those believing in success of low intensity wars are lunatics, living in fools paradise, like Hitler and Mussolini.

War between two nuclear neighbours is out of contention, because, even if one country using first strike option annihilates the other neighbour, the fallout of nuclear radiation will leave the victor, uninhabitable forever.

Thus, peace is the only option for India and Pakistan.

Don’t be afraid of problems between the two countries, because they will remain for ever, but we have to give priority to peace, over the problems.

Let us make a new start from the beginning of the new year 2018, with the slogan – Long live the friendship of the teeming millions of India and Pakistan.

Pakistani cricketers always bear the burden of representing the image and the hopes of millions of fans. Their behaviors have a social and political significance that goes well beyond the field and enter into the houses of all citizens and the most powerful institutions. The victory in a world cup ODI or T20 contest, can move nearly all sections of Pakistani nation in an un comparable manner.

Thus, for the ordinary Pakistani cricket fan, PCB is not just an organisation; rather, it is a mini Pakistan.

Hence, PCB not the players…. needs a turn around..!

It is suggested that PCB must be totally revamped from the top to the bottom, to make it function like a top class world level organisation, with zero tolerance for old amateur and bureaucratic style of working, intellectual, moral and financial corruption, nepotism and favouritism, in each and every sphere of its operations, with its vision statement as “Better than the Best”.

If PCB wants to survive in the fast changing world of competition, it must change its old habits and rebuild itself inside out. PCB must know that a professional organisation is “of and for professional people”.

For inside out rebuilding, the PCB must come out in a crystal clear manner that “how it want to be thought of” and then consider every thing that PCB “say and do.”

Every PCB department must also be converted into a “cost center” responsible for its revenues and expenses.

Side by side, PCB must also shun its CULTURE of politics and self serving policies. This is absolutely necessary, because culture of an organisation is the environment under which, all it’s employees perform their duties. What is needed by the PCB is to create a culture of team work, which stimulates the employees for working with absolute honesty and recognises and rewards employee efforts; and these values permeates the entire organisation.

While chaos, politics and leg pulling is rampant in the rank and file employees of the PCB, how it can be expected to produce players, who will not be equally, if not more, afflicted by these malaise? As they say in the IT jargon, garbage in garbage out, or output can not be more than the input.

However, the top notches of the government and the PCB, must know very clearly that PCB can not be turned into a first class world level organisation, by just transfers, postings, change of designations, hiring or firing of employees. In fact, such steps breeds even more discontent and ill will, among the employees and the general masses. To achieve the desired results, PCB needs a total and complete overhaul, disregarding any political or other pressures for serving any vested interest(s), examples of which (running the organisation on an absolutely 100% merit basis) can be seen in many Pakistani organisations like LUMS, SKMCH & RC, IBA and the GIK etc.

Till such time, PCB itself is turned into a center of excellence, it can’t produce a bunch of players, who can be the world beaters, on a consistent level.

In any team game, a team do not need champions like Don Bradman or David Beckham to be the world beaters. But, greats like Don Bradman and David Beckham in any team, can not excel, without the cooperation of other team members.

For our players to consistently excel at the international arena, PCB coaches need to repeatedly hammer into the minds of the players, the following famous quote of Aristotle.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.”

Now world over competitive sports is not considered just a past time hobby or entertainment and fitness activity. Rather, sports activities are considered and handled as a science. As such, PCB must shun business as usual decades old approach. Moreover, the PCB think tank must “PLAN FOR SUCCESS” with clear and measurable objectives.

Gone are the old decadent ways of assembling players for a camp, just before the tour to show their fitness and playing abilities. It must be the specified duty of the think tank and the selectors to devise a plan to monitor 24/7 the health, eating habits, general behaviour and performance of the CONTRACTED players, in a scientific manner. These contracted players must not be allowed to have a free reign, even during the off days, as they are almost like paid employees of the PCB.

Moreover, the FINE TUNING and grooming of the marked pool of all the talented and upcoming players (non-contracted) should be the SPECIFIC responsibility of the NCA staff, who must constantly produce, highest calibre five players, for each position of the game, both for the men and the ladies teams.

It will not be out of place to conclude, by mentioning the quotes of the two famous sports coaches, for the motivation of our players, who are under tremendous pressure to perform on a consistent level.

“Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later the man who wins, is the man who thinks he can.”
– Quoted from Vince Lombardi

“When you’re playing against a stacked deck, compete even harder. Show the world how much you’ll fight for the winners circle. If you do, someday the cellophane will crackle off a fresh pack, one that belongs to you, and the cards will be stacked in your favor.”
– Famous quote by Pat Riley