Lessons from IPL

The flavour of the season is undoubtedly the Indian Premier League. The most phenomenal aspect of the tournament has been the spotlight borne by the younger players while the experienced lot have been in the dark. A point worth considering is - did it take the IPL to make so bright stars out of the Gonis and Abhishek Nayars? Weren't they playing as well as this before the IPL also? And more importantly, how important is reputation when it comes to on field performance?

What the IPL has shown us is that players with innate ability just needs a platform to showcase their skills. There are players like Manpreet Goni who have not played any significant first class cricket, but has been one of the stellar performers in the tournament so far. Again, it just goes to underline the fact that raw talent and ability always talks louder than hard grounded experience.
This is a huge learning for everyone involved in dealing with people. It can be a big mistake to refrain from giving somebody the big chance, just because the person has not performed on big stage. The number of years of experience may not just be the correct indicator of potential performance. All our traditional organisations work on the model where experience is heavily relied upon, this may be explains why so many Indian IT firms promote satisfactory underperformance. Rather, the secret is to identify potential stars, groom them and give them the right, big opportunity and reap all the benefits!!

The RM Syndrome

This is indeed common knowledge and written about in length, but the enormity of its impact on everything related to people in an organisation is so huge that is deserves a separate post. The RM Syndrome is the phenomenon where people insensitive Reporting Managers bring down employee morale and productivity. Let me call them 'Cyclopes' - well the classic definition seems to fit the bill almost perfectly! The single most important reason for employee dissatisfaction in Indian IT firms is the RM syndrome.
I am yet to come across an Indian IT firm that has understood the true implications of this phenomenon and has put in measures to contain it. As long as that does not happen, organisational level policy and mission statements will remain in the books forever and never trickle down to the work stations.