We all become what we become in life because someone believed in us much before we began to believe in ourselves.
No matter how high we are in the pecking order, no matter how successful, our continued and holistic success depends upon our ability to realize that we all need someone ethical and honest outside of us to have an objective view of what we do and what we don’t.
The best case-studies that can be picked up these days are from the world of sport. Why do even the greatest of champions have a coach or need one? How can a coach add value to a world champion? And more importantly, how is it that the best of global players have, by and large, comfortably adapted to having coaches and working with them.
These days, almost every team, every player has a coach. Some teams and sports, like for instance cricket, have multiple coaches for various specializations. A coach or mentor is like the third eye. Small differences can be the defining criteria between a good player and an outstanding player, and that is where the coach comes in. With availability of the best technology, a player may be able to closely observe and watch his own game, but may not do it objectively on his own.
Now let us take this same philosophy and shuttle a little between the world of business and the world of sport. Why do organizations need to have internal and external auditors? Why must a well-run organization have a good, sound board of directors? It all boils down to the same issue of objectivity. Operational teams and CXOs can be great performers, and yet become prejudiced about what they get attached to. It is quite natural. And this is where a third eye or an observer’s point of view becomes vitally important.
The most essential quality of good coaches, or a good board of directors is not that they should be better than the best players or operational teams, but that they should know the game well, they should be great observers and be able to blend behaviors with regulations, processes, training and techniques to yield a strong, positive, winning culture and to create a good pipeline or bench-strength.
History has way too many stories of expensive corporate failures. The complexities of these failures and frauds keep mounting despite frequent strengthening of rules, regulations and processes. A majority of these failures are not because of lack of competence, or intelligence, or skills. Most failures arise due to behavioral issues, because people hesitate, or do not speak up to deliver unpleasant news whenever and wherever a situation demands. It often becomes a case of conveying what the owners want to hear, and not what they truly need to know.
These situations create silences which can lead to disasters.
Do take a deep, hard look at a lot of global economic, political and corporate decisions being taken. Quite a few do not seem to be decided upon the evidence of truth. While we get to hear enough stories about good brands and listed companies failing due to various reasons including inefficient boards, a chunk of the problem now rests in a large majority of mid-sized organizations and startups.
The dawn of a new era for good corporate governance is sorely needed, both in India as well as the GCC. Organizations sorely need wise and experienced directors who can sit in board meetings and play the same role that team coaches are now performing for the best players in the world. The best boards need to be a team, like in the world of sports.
Having just a group of wealthy and personally accomplished yet non-team players is likely to cause serious dys-functioning.
Money and wealth is critical. Yet there needs to be a way to make it a wonderful by-product of the organization’s vision. We all run the race of life in laps to discover that every finishing line is also the starting line.
We realize year after year that the closing balance once again becomes the opening balance, and we start all over again.
When work becomes our self-expression, money comes as a natural by-product. Most wonderfully good organizations, somewhere deep down, follow this philosophy. Nobody succeeds all the time. And no one is destined to remain a failure either.
The human race is the only creation capable of leaving a legacy, and to live beyond their lifetimes. Therefore, it should become a mandatory responsibility for coaches, mentors, world-class players, world-class organizations as well as boards to leave a legacy by creating a better, more-capable, more-efficient bench strength of the same. World class players will come and go. Management teams and boards will come and go.
The endeavor must be to see that the world of sport and the world of business organizations remain as a legacy which only gets better.