Book Review: The Winning Way by Anita and Harsha Bhogle

Book Review: The Winning Way by Anita and Harsha Bhogle

Quite often than rare books on the so called key to success and positivity in life seem to be quite sermonic but not this time is the case.

Brilliantly drawing parallels from the field of sports and elaborating how wonderfully they can be applied to corporate and day to day life is a beautiful tale told by both Anita and Harsha Bhogle.

What keeps the winning cycle ticking? Harsha and Anita put it simply as attributes such as team goals always having a higher precedence over personal goals; culling at the right time; do the one percent things correctly; non-negotiable work ethic;  the right attitude is paramount besides ability and passion. This applies for both sports and corporate houses.

The Bhogles make the reader sit up when they describe that how a chronic winner actually kills all hopes of their rivals when they mention of the mighty Aussies in the field of cricket in the late nineties or the feared quartet pace attack of the Windies in the early eighties.

The authors do not limit their research to sports and corporate houses but also derive inspiration from unexpected sources such as the Harry Potter series when they quote “It is our choices Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities”.

When the duo talk about goals they explore a new horizon with Rahul Dravid chipping in how performance oriented goals are more meaningful than result oriented goals or for that matter how important it is to set a goal in life that must be out of reach but never out of sight.

The thin but distinct line of difference between a loser and a winner is well brought out through the line “Winners visualize the rewards of success, losers visualize the penalties of failure”.

With all the mantras of success being well told the traps are not left undiscovered. This is brought out aptly when the authors quote Bill Gates “Success is a lousy teacher, it seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose”.

Success must always be talked about in the context of time, space and scale. This is well corroborated by the fact that the McDonalds to succeed in India had to forgo their beef and pork burgers and invent the McAlooTikki burger to cater to vegetarians in India.

Never before has a book so well described about the three closest friends that chronic winners may have namely, ego, over-confidence and complacence.

However it’s here that the authors have missed a famous personality whose life can arguably be regarded as an epitome of a small boy making it big and then falling from the heights because of the afore told three friends that a chronic winner has and then winning back again. Yes it is the greatest sportsman of the twentieth century, the legendary Muhammad Ali. Hopefully the authors have not missed talking about him in their sessions with the corporate houses.

The Bhogles have well documented the symptoms of a losing team for both sports and corporate houses alike and they can be put as bureaucracy, ego and internal groupism, weighed down by past failures and lack of self belief, too many or too few processes.

How important it is to change and come out of one’s comfort zone is vividly told through the real life parallels of the introduction of shampoo sachets in the corporate world and the invention of the Twenty Twenties in the field of cricket. The Darwin theory of evolution still holds very true as explained through the case of Indian Hockey.

The “Fosbury flop” introduced in the field of high-jumps and the change that Jonty Rhodes brought in the way fielding was done in cricket are just a few examples well testifying the author’s theory of “Positive Turbulence”.

The authors quiet meticulously bring out as to where Matthew Hayden could have been possibly correct when he opined that Indian cricketers are selfish and play for personal milestones. The authors chip in and quite correctly that “Our large population forces us to develop selfish instincts at every step as well exhibited when catching a bus or train”.

The same view is echoed by Marten Pieters, MD and CEO of Vodafone Essar that “People are individualistic in all cultures. But in India you learn very young that you can only succeed more or less at the cost of someone else”. It’s a bit tickling when the authors mention of the investment-banking as the most challenging with respect to team-building.

The fact that stars can make or break a team is well told through the temperamental Shoaib Akhtar and Roy Keane.

The authors not only list down the challenges of today for both corporate houses and sports such as “Envy encroaching respect” but also speak quite exclusively of how important it is to maintain heterogeneity in a team and how important it is for a leader never to think “what-if” after having made a decision.

The “Last Word” by Rahul Dravid is impeccable as “The WALL” himself and I leave it for you to read it yourself.