Virat Kohli's match winning knock on Sunday pulverised the Australian T-20 team yet again. Except this one was played under extreme pressure, the burden of expectations from his fans was sky-high and other than his captain M S Dhoni and the old war horse Yuvraj Singh, there was no one in his side who was willing to stand up and fight.
This column isn't yet another well-deserved tribute to one of the best T-20 knocks we've ever seen. It merely seeks to ask: as business leaders, are you doing enough to create the platform for prodigious young talent like Kohli rise inside your own firm? Because the future will be won or lost by how well we mould and groom our young leadership talent. And there's every chance that leaders of enterprises, both old and new, need to create the right environment for their bright young men and women to flourish.
Are you spotting them early?
At Sachin Tendulkar's last test, the great Kapil Dev told a cricketer friend of mine in a casual chat: yeh bachcha sab ko pichhe chod dega (This boy will leave everybody behind.) He was referring to none other than Kohli, now regarded as one of the greatest limited overs cricketer of his time. It takes a naturally gifted cricketer like Dev to immediately recognise exceptional talent when he sees one. And we're indeed fortunate to have a a great leader like Rahul Dravid coach our U-19 side. It increases our chances of discovering the next Virat Kohli manifold when you have folks like Dravid looking out for them.
When he was at the helm at ICICI Bank, K V Kamath was an equally gifted talent spotter. He handpicked a whole next generation of leaders, of the likes of Chanda Kochhar, Shikha Sharma, Renuka Ramnath, V Vaidyanathan, Nachiket Mor and Bhargav Dasgupta. He created leadership challenges for each of them - and provided the air cover when required.
But the moot point: what would happen after he was gone? Was there a way to bottle up Mr Kamath's genius? That's exactly what the then leadership team persuaded Mr Kamath to do: to institutionalise this leadership development process.
Are you building the right mindset for success?
I remember watching Unmukt Chand lead our U-19 national side in 2012. He was billed as the next cricketing sensation after Kohli. Chand even penned down his memories of the World Cup win in a book Sky is the Limit, with the likes of Dravid writing a foreword for the book.
Yet Chand hasn't quite lived up to his potential, once he moved into the senior league. And his story is a familiar one. Many talented youngsters like him, get caught in a dangerous spiral of hype, and lose their way.
In fact, not so long ago, even Kohli hit a bad patch. He went back to the nets to work hard on ironing out his flaws. Today, he scores freely on both sides of the wicket and has raised his game to a new level. He's learned to keep things simple. And above all, build both the discipline to deliver consistently and the mental resilience to deal with the ups and downs in one's career.
After all, success is seldom a one-way street.
So when you hire smart young people from business school or the IITs, it is important that they know that they'd be entitled to success. They have to perform and earn a place in the table, like everybody else.
Are you getting out of the way?
In India, older folks refuse to let go, even when they are no longer relevant in their industry. They believe they must take all the important decisions in the firm. And refuse to step aside to create space for young leaders to come through.
At a recent workshop organised by a leading consumer products company, film-maker Prahlad Kakkar shared the incredible example of how he let loose young talent at his production house in an unstructured, chaotic environment, where they were encouraged to make their own rules. If young people survived the ordeal for two years, he encouraged them to set up a new firm that competed with the mother ship. Today, a large majority of the new production houses in the industry are led by Genesis alumni.
The lesson: don't molly-coddle your young talent. Letting them free - and not believing that you need to make all the decisions for them - is sometimes the best way to build future leaders.
Yet, sometimes, standing up for your men may be just as important. Dhoni has backed Suresh Raina, Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma, despite fierce public criticism. He expects them to deliver in the next two matches. And we'll need to see if that trust is able to galvanise them to raise their game at the right time.
The writer is co-founder of Founding Fuel, a learning platform that serves a community of entrepreneurial leaders
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
