Lessons from IPL

As the first IPL,or the Indian Premier League draws to a closure,around the world cricket fans are amazed on the quality of " unknown talent" this tourament witnessed. Likes of Shaun Marsh, Manpreet Goni,Siddharth Trivedi,Shikhar Dhawan and many more have not only left an impression with their astute skills, they have also made a strong claim for the national team slots. This is indeed a good time for world cricket, with talent abound.

One sits up wondering where these people have been all this while ?
A look at some of the musical contests on the idiot box ( american idol, tvs saregama ) and so many other examples makes one wonder whether some kind of talent hunt is required even in corporates?

We would have read so much about Talent crunch, lack of successors for key positions and so on and so forth. However there is little organizations have done out of the box to change the things the way they have been. Employees still continue to be labeled within their job definitions. Very few organizations actually encourage innovation. More importantly the following lessons from IPL can help.

1. IPL benefitted youngsters because they rubbed the shoulders with the best, enabling the best to come out of them. In corporate world, we need to give responsibilities early to groom leaders. This would enable the identification of future leaders.

2. IPL gave new meaning to cricket. Life is not always about a long innings. If we had time, a lot can be achieved. Its however stars who perform best under pressure. We need to identify star performers by measuring the pressures they have performed under. Not easy to do, though not wishful thinking either. Using a performance metric that also considers this parameter, it can be measured.

3. Last but not the least, organizations have to give some freedom for innovation, learning from mistake often is the best way to achieve this. Organizations that allow employees to make mistake, also stand to gain from innovation.

Times are changing, so is the ecosystem. Wonder when organizations would wake up and realise this and for their own benefit, Change !!!!