Known Unknowns: No room for heroes!

Congratulations to Team India for demonstrating grit and resilience in pulling off a Test series win down under. In cricket, politics, and in the corporate world, we need team-players to deliver sustainable wins. Growing up in Bengaluru, a stone’s throw from iconic cricketers of three generations, playing street cricket, one learns that heroes are not an essential ingredient in successful teams. Individual heroics can win us a match. Team-players win us series and tournaments.

Unfortunately, the common trend is to hero-worship sportspersons, politicians, and corporate honchos. It is us ordinary people who need the heroes. Stories are spun, advertisements are sold, bats are branded, and the hero slowly becomes less a person of his profession and more a star. It has always been the case that winning teams comprise good performers who can work together. The superstars who aim for individual glory and an enduring legacy sometimes get just that…at the cost of the team. The Australia Test series win was awesome, now we need to figure out how to make it consistent.

It is attributed to Lao Tzu: A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. As the US and the world welcome Joe Biden’s presidency, it is clearly going to be a low-key affair; maybe even boring. But it is going to be a great relief not to have a self-obsessed, attention-seeking, social media-defined person at the helm of the US, the world’s oldest democracy.

All of Biden’s initial actions have been around unifying a broken country, including repealing the discriminatory travel ban, re-entering the Paris climate agreement, restoring the federal emphasis on not discriminating based on sexual orientation or gender identity, reinstating the need for federal agencies and contractors to hold diversity and inclusion training.

Even Biden’s inaugural was a carefully crafted show of American diversity, as is the cabinet and deputies he has picked between his election win in November and January 20. With performers of white, black, Latina, and mixed descent – both men and women.

Amanda Gorman, the 22-year-old black woman poet stole the show with a beautiful and optimistic recital: That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious. Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.

Neither in India nor in the US do we need populist, swash-buckling political leaders. We need inclusive, action-oriented leaders who are not worried only about the next election. I believe our present government has the right intent and is action-oriented. However, the current Indian political leadership needs to proactively build an inclusive image to be able to take global centre stage.

In the corporate world, neither Mark Zuckerberg, whose regard for privacy is under serious question, nor Elon Musk, whose tweets match Trump’s insanity, are role model technology leaders. Despite other criticisms, Zuckerberg has technical legitimacy, empowers his teams, and genuinely want to change the world to a better place.

Closer home, we have not been able to even move from a proprietorship culture to a professional culture in Indian corporations. I have worked with wonderful Indian leaders at Titan and Tata Steel, apart from other Tata group companies. I have worked with wonderful inclusive leaders in GE. However, these people are in a minority. There are too many leaders who suck upwards and blow downwards. Globally, we need corporate leaders who are less full of themselves and think more about employees and customers. We have no room for heroes. We need more Ajinkyas.