Tuesday, January 08, 2008

S2 Muses: Star Players and Dysfunctions of a Team

I believe this is often discussed, spoken and written subject on the subtleties of team dynamics. You don't appreciate the phenom till it impacts your bottom line. An analogy from the world of sports. The indian cricket team has all time star players who will be remembered in the cricketing history books. Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid are recognized, established stars and they continue  and continue to deliver stellar individual performances but the Indian team fails to reach any greatness. They are medicore at best sprinkled with real bad and glory days. That points to  the inherent difficulty in assessing the complexity of the solution. (Note : the indian team has come together as a team to back one of their players who has been recently banned showing some unified spirit). Who is responsible for the team to act/play like a team? The obvious answer lies in the team leadership which is the coach and captain. However, I believe on the contrary that it is the resposibility for each and every individual player. Better said than done. The team's cohesiveness and coherene is orchestrated by the mastero and he needs to be constantly engaged in ensuring that players are alinged since a single player who is not mentally and goal wise aligned can ruin the show.  Yes, we do tend to sack captains and coaches whenever a team fails without addressing the root cause. This is not necessarily bad since it is better than not making any change or making changes that just do lip service and hope for a miracle to rescue the ship for yet another time.


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