Saturday 19 March 2016

Collective Desire to Win

 In 1983. when one day cricket was still in its infancy the third ICC Cricket  world cup tournament was played in England and a dark horse India made it to the finals and it's young captain laid his hands on the trophy.This was a match  billed as between David and Goliath and little David managed to win.The mighty West Indies which had won both the the first two world cups, boasted of all time greats such as Vivian Richards,Clive Loyd, Gordon Greenidge,Andy Roberts,Malcom Marshall and Michael Holding in their team.India on the other hand had more of inexperienced youngsters.

The winning captain attributed  the success to 'team spirit'. He then described team spirit as "nothing but a collective desire to win." This is an interesting definition and can find relevance in any field including corporates.In 1983, the collective desire to win kept on increasing for the Indian team, with each unexpected success and the team motivated each other to perform at their best.The problem arises when the 'collective desire' is replaced by 'individual desire' to win.; whether it is a football team or a music composing duo. doubles tennis pair or a script writing team of two or more members. When thoughts like "whether I contributed more than you" in the success begins to enter the mind the roots of the 'collective desire' tree begin to get cut.

The challenge for HR in the corporate situation is to keep reiterating and highlighting the importance of the collective desire for success which should take precedence over individual brilliance. In a play, no matter how great an individual actor may be, his dominance should not affect adversely  the overall effectiveness of the script.We are told of an incident on the sets of  the acclaimed film director Gulzar's 'Koshish' in which both the male and female lead were deaf and dumb.While filming  two scenes the hardened, experienced crew who have been part of filming all types of scenes over the years in the film industry, were found weeping uncontrollably.The first thing Gulzar, who is a brillant editor as well, did at the editing table was to delete these two scenes.The reason given was that the  impact of the rest of the movie and its totality would have been wiped out by these two scenes.

I would like to conclude by underscoring the importance of the "collective desire" It's impact is not for a particular assignment at work but has far reaching relevance for future successes as well.Let us as HRDians  accept this challenge of keeping the flag of "collective desire to win" flying  high in our organizations.