Serendipity and Learning

The last year, as I embarked on my entrepreneurship journey, I ended up buying a ton of books. Being a book lover, it was easy to justify all the purchases.  All of them were important to my learning, my development and the development of a practice.  But what happened - as I observed - was that the range of books I purchased was narrow cast towards my work.  And my son asked me "You work and you read about work, why dont you read something else?" And that question prompted me to raid a few of his books...

Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath is a book on decision making. There are many books on decision making and a new book on a topic thats already written about quite a bit is not an easy task. Made to Stick by the same authors still remains my go to book when it comes to thinking of new campaigns and methods. The book starts with the four processes of decision making, the four villains that make the process go awry and then it goes on to say, how can one conquer the villains using a variety of methods and a framework that they have created... It is a lucid book, easy to read, peppered with examples. The cons is that if you read a few books on decision science, from the classic "Thinking Fast and Slow" to a few others, the examples  and stories tend to repeat...

The Indian team went to South Africa and had a tough time. This was not the first time. This has been a debate for 30 plus years now. Why doesnt the Indian team not perform well on overseas pitches? The answer is simple. There is no practice. There is no skill building. This answer is also nothing new. How does one build a new skill? By putting onself out there, trying, failing, learning, unlearning, relearning and finally bit by bit climbing the ladder of skills. So, if the team has to be play on fast bouncy pitches abroad - they need to play on fast bouncy pitches at home. And that means, when the next generation of kids grow up, they need to learn to play on fast bouncy pitches. In theory, all it means is to have every alternate match to be played on a different pitch. And you do this over a generation - even 5 years, you have a battle ready team. Cut to business. If you need to learn to handle a difficult conversation like a pro, you have to practice doing it. Simply becau...