Loud Thinking

Archive for April, 2014

“He who allows his day to pass by without practicing generosity and enjoying life’s pleasures is like a blacksmith’s bellows- he breathes but does not live.”

Sanskrit proverb

“You cannot drive your car looking at the rear view mirror. Focus on going forward.”

— Steve Harvey

Three Questions to Ask a New Boss

When you start working with a new manager, asking how she likes to operate can help you build a productive relationship. Your boss may not think to articulate her management style, so asking thoughtful questions will demonstrate your attentiveness and interest in efficiency.
“Do you prefer that information be delivered formally or informally?” If she prefers the former, prepare documents in advance of meetings and send frequent updates on assigned projects. If the latter, don’t clog her inbox; update her at crucial junctures or when you need guidance.
“How do you like to process information?” She may like to hear it and respond in person, or to see it in writing before a conversation.
“How would you describe your management style?” If she likes to have a hand in day-to-day operations and decision-making, touch base often. If she’d rather delegate, keep her posted on major developments, but handle most details on your own.

Adapted by HBR from Managing Up (20-Minute Manager Series).

A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas.

A day will come when the bullets and bombs are replaced by votes, by universal suffrage, by the venerable arbitration of a great supreme senate which will be to Europe what Parliament is to England, the Diet to Germany, and the Legislative Assembly to France.

A day will come when a cannon will be a museum-piece, as instruments of torture are today. And we will be amazed to think that these things once existed!

A day will come when we shall see those two immense groups, the United States of America and the United States of Europe, facing one another, stretching out their hands across the sea, exchanging their products, their arts, their works of genius, clearing up the globe, making deserts fruitful, ameliorating creation under the eyes of the Creator, and joining together, to reap the well-being of all, these two infinite forces, the fraternity of men and the power of God.

Discours d’ouverture, congrès de la paix, [Opening address, Peace Congress], Paris (21 August 1849); published in Actes et paroles – Avant l’exil (1875)

My article published by the Urdu daily “JANG” dated 10 April, 2014. Link:- http://e.jang.com.pk/04-10-2014/karachi/page15.asp

Get Specific When Giving Credit

Most of us have witnessed moments when credit was given unfairly – a supervisor unabashedly claims credit for his invisible staff’s work, or a quiet performer is inadequately recognized for her contribution. This damages organizational culture and deflates employee motivation. (Why expend the effort if no one will recognize it?) If you regularly award credit to deserving individuals, people will see that the system is fair, and this will drive performance.
Recognize those who recognize others. Thanking team members who highlight others’ efforts shows that you value generous and honest attribution of credit.
Elevate the quiet heroes. Quiet contributors are seldom concerned with taking credit, but making an effort to reward them will create a sense of integrity in your organization.
Remember there’s plenty of credit to go around. There are no limits to how many individuals can be recognized for contributing to an outcome, but recognition loses meaning when everyone (even slackers) gets it. Specific attributions of credit always trump blanket statements of praise.

Adapted by HBR from “ The Importance of Giving Credit” by Sachin H. Jain.

Pakistan cricket team always had the potential and talent to win, any and all of the past cricket ODI world cup tournaments. As such, there should be no doubt, about its chances of winning the next cricket ODI World Cup scheduled to commence from February 2015, to be played in Australia and New Zealand.

In this regard, PCB must prepare a plan named ”Vision 2015″. This plan should be a fool proof strategy with specific focus on winning the 2015 ODI World Cup tournament, considering all risk factors, like sudden unavailability of any player due to various reasons, at least five umpiring decisions going against us (two in batting & three in bowling innings), dropped catches/missed run outs and failure of main bowlers and batsmen etc.

We should remember that plans never fail, we fail to plan. Moreover, the PCB “Vision 2015” must state that “You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.”

The broad outlines of the “Vision 2015″ are defined as below.

1. A pool of 50 talented, but mostly youthful players, having world class potential (like Sami Aslam, Awais Zia, Anwer Ali and Usman Shinwari {who has already attained 150 KMPH bowling speed} should be immediately called at the NCA, to be throughly trained in all the aspects of the game, for later stage short listing of 30 and final selection of 15 players, to represent Pakistan in the World Cup 2015.

2. 4-5 youngsters from the pool of 50 players should be selected for the future 7-10 years captain’s role. This set of future probable captains should be throughly trained and groomed for leadership role by the professional leadership trainers, from the civil and military field.

3. Before deciding the future captain and vice captain of the national teams, these short listed players should be assessed by a board of civil and military psychologists, for providing their opinion about the potential leadership abilities of these players. This will help the PCB, in easily deciding to hand over the reins of the team to a player, as a future captain and vice captain, for a longer period.

4. As is practised in football and few other games, PCB should revolutionise the role of the head coach or cricket manager, by shifting to him almost all the responsibilities of the captain including even the selection of the playing eleven and decision of the batting order etc. Captains role should be just limited to leading the players during the fielding, that too under active supervision of the head coach or the cricket manager. This change will also eliminate the rampant politics and blackmailing of player power, which is highly visible in our cricket team players. Plus it will also minimise the chances of spot or match fixing from our team.

5. A visionary cricketer (who must have the reputation of an unsaleable commodity) of an ultra high calibre, should be appointed the coach or cricket manager of the Pakistan cricket team. This time the head coach or the other support staff must NOT be selected on the likes and dislikes of the coaching staff selection committee members, as was done in February 2014, when almost 100% recommendations of the committee proved wrong and Zaheer Abbas, Moin Khan and Shoaib Muhammad were recently sacked ignominiously by the PCB. Here, the argument of the committee members that these coaches could not perform in a short period of two months, does not hold water, because what happened with the wrong selection on likes and favouritism was, that, for the first time in the history of the T20 World Cup, our team failed to reach the semi finals stage. If these coaches were handicapped by the short time, at least our teams performance must NOT have gone down. There is no justification for the surrender, to the extent that our team created a shameful world record of scoring 13 runs for 4 wickets, in 6 power play overs when ONLY 2 fielders are allowed outside the circle.

6. We should also set a new trend and hire a full or part time world class mentor, for which I recommend Sir Alexander Chapman “Alex” Ferguson, CBE, who is a former Scottish football manager and player who managed Manchester United from 1986 to 2013. His time at the club has led to Ferguson being regarded as one of the most successful, admired and respected managers in the history of the game. PCB must ensure that in the hiring of Sir Alex Ferguson, money should not be a barrier, notwithstanding any amount demanded by him. PCB should consider this expense as an investment in 24K gold. The mentor should be specifically responsible for making our players mentally the strongest in the world, along with his other defined duties.

7. All cricket playing centers of PCB in Pakistan, should remodel the boundary distances to 90 meters (matching the size of huge Australian grounds to used for the World Cup 2015) and batsmen should practise taking 5 runs, in case, ball is fielded before it reaches the rope.

8. Any player who is not of age and fitness to serve the country for next 5 years, should be discarded now, for ODI and T20 games.

9. A world class fielding coach of the calibre of Jonty Rhodes, should be appointed for the team. If we have to be world champions there should be no compromise on the quality of the coaches due to any monetary constraints. Remember, quality never comes cheap and second or third class coaches can never produce world beaters.

10. We must find more than five bowlers from the tribal belt or any rugged area of the country, who should be able to bowl at 100 MPH speed. To attract the country talent of fast bowling, a handsome prize should be annouced, as an incentive for this ultra high speed bowling.

11. Cricket academy at PCB HQ Lahore, must be headed by a world renowned batsman.

12. PCB should take on the challenge of round the year cricket (in summers, games starting at 5 PM) playing arrangements of local and foreign teams in Pakistan. And in summer 2014, PCB should arrange late start ODI/T20 matches in Pakistan. Efforts should be renewed to invite teams of Afghanistan, Ireland or Netherlands for providing experience to our youngsters.

13. All PCB grounds in the country (even in smaller cities/towns), should be provided with lights for night games.

14. In order to prepare fast and bouncy tracks on all PCB grounds, suitable soil and if possible prefabricated pitches may be imported from abroad. We should try use these pre-fabricated pitches during our home series in the UAE, as well as for the proposed PSL matches in the UAE.

“Don’t let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.”

— Richard L. Evans

“Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.”

Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965);
British statesman, prime minister, author, Nobel Prize winner

Stop Believing that Everything Is Urgent

In an ever-accelerating business culture, where smaller teams are taking on increasing workloads, it’s impossible to get everything done as fast as we’d like. Of course, some tasks and projects require more urgency than others – but if we consider everything to be urgent, we jam up the queue and confuse trifles with true priorities. The challenge in this do-it-now culture is to tell the difference between the two. Challenge the assumption that everything needs to be done right away, and work with your team to eliminate unnecessary or low-value work. Are people tied up with repetitive activities that don’t make a difference? Could those be done less often or with less effort? Can your weekly status reports become monthly? Could a wordy memo become a short list of key points? Tweaks like these can create the bandwidth you need to tackle truly urgent projects.

Adapted by HBR from “ Two Ways to Reduce “Hurry Up and Wait” Syndrome” by Ron Ashkenas.