Sports & the challenge of patronage.

From the little history that I have read, performing arts - and sports was considered one of them - have historically survived because of the patronage of the king.

The king spots a talent, sponsors the talent and provides the facilities required for the talent to thrive.

The talent gets a salary so that s/he can focus on the skill s/he is good at.  Not sure if any talented sportsperson or artisan got rich through this method. But I guess it was a good way of earning a living and supporting your family.

In today's world, the problem with sports and other performing arts - all labelled so nicely as "Co-scholastic" activities in the school system - is that they have historically thrived on royal patronage.

And in every discussion about the state of sports and arts in India, the discussion goes towards "The Government should implement so-and-so policies" "The Government should support the stars of India" etc.

In most countries across the world, the state provides the grounds, stadiums, parks, community recreational centers - and then private entrepreneurs run programs on that state-provided infrastructure. This is a key point as the opportunity cost of real estate does not enter the economics.

If a private player had to think about providing a large plot of land for a sports activity, the opportunity cost of building a large apartment complex would just kill the model.

Even the richest sports body in the world, the BCCI, uses government provided infrastructure. They do not have their own stadiums.

Society has never been able to promote sports without the state's support. There are enough stories of "passing the hat around" during county cricket games - as a way of collecting some money for the players.

With the IPL, modern-day kings have appeared in the form of IPL Franchisees. This is seen across the world with people buying football clubs, basketball franchisees etc.

And again, the sport thrives because modern-day Rajas have patronised the game, funded the system, paid the players a lot of money and used the state-created sports infrastructure.

In the last 50-odd years, with all the bluster around NBA, NFL etc and now IPL, there is a whole industry around helping young kids make a career out of sport.

And that is where we have a design level flaw. Sports was meant to be played for the joy and fun of it. Now,  it is being played because there is a career at the end of it.

Ask any successful sportsperson and s/he will tell you that s/he played for the love of the game. Never with a thought of turning pro. If it happens, great. If not, hey, I am enjoying the game.

The modern-day patronage in the form of professional clubs, franchisees etc is presenting a challenge to the original concept of sport. And taking the attention towards the "top-of-the-pyramid", the best kids in sport. The kids who, by definition, are the top 0.01% of the population (wrt sporting abilities). And in the process, the remaining 99.99% are losing interest in sport. Because it is made to seem as if sport is not for them. It is only for the 0.01%.

Since the patronage (and the returns expected by the patrons) inherently works on the principle of peak performance, there is very little motivation towards getting all kids to play and develop through the sports experience.

Without confronting this challenge of patronage in sports & its resultant issues, we cannot move ahead on the point of a sporting culture, sporting nation etc.

For any sport or performing art to flourish on its own - without the patronage of the state or the modern-day Rajas, it has to make sense for the common man (rather, child) to engage in it. And hence, the benefits have to be such that they make sense for the child to engage in sport - and for the parent to encourage the engagement - even if there is no career in that field going ahead.

The health & fitness benefits, the social well-being and the all-rounded personality that develops through participation in sports are key benefits acknowledged by parents, employers, co-workers and society.

Those are the reasons most people ascribe to their "success" in adult or professional life. Not the marks they scored.

The educational value of the sports experience is crucial to a child's development.

And hence it cannot be left to patronage. Or at the mercy of haphazard urban planning wherein playgrounds disappear as dumping lots or are never created.

The school system has to deliver the educational value of the sports experience. Every parent should demand a good sports experience for their child, especially if their child is not in the school team.

Only by demanding that an inclusive sports experience be an integral part of every child's education can we fight off the challenge of patronage.

Children at Play. All fun. No learn?

Over the last 4 years of engaging with school leaders, parents, school coordinators, PE teachers, class teachers and school trustees on the challenge of getting kids to play in-school, there has been one consistent issue all along.

It comes disguised in various comments we hear regularly:

"The children should see different props and equipment regularly"

"The children seem to be doing the same activity multiple times"

"When children play, they should have fun"

Here is the "issue": The belief that when children play, there should be fun & novelty.

The problem is that the people making the statements are not always viewing things from a child's perspective or from an understanding of the physical development experience.

Let's take each aspect:

1. FUN: As our dear advisor, Dr. George Selleck puts it: "Fun is not only about kids laughing and running around  the sprinklers in the lawn". He presented 3 essential components of FUN i.e. anybody is having "fun" when:

• they are fully involved in the activity.
• they are fully engaged with the group they are in.
• they are stretched to their limits - and maybe slightly beyond.

As adults, we have inadvertently connected fun with laughter, lack of pressure and lack of goals. But in real life, that is not the only time we have fun. More often than not, we have fun when none of these are present.

When you work hard on an interesting problem, you are having fun. Nobody is laughing or giggling. When someone runs a marathon, they have fun. When a job is challenging, has a good set of co-workers and keeps you fully engaged, you have fun. There is pressure. There are goals to be met. And it is fun.

Building EduSports has been fun. It has been tough. But fun. Or maybe, it has been fun because it has been tough. Designing the program, convincing the school leaders & parents, delivering the program, incorporating feedback, failing, getting it right, failing some more - and then some moments of magic. That whole ride is fun.

If all it took to sign-up schools for the EduSports program was to put an ad in the papers, it might not have been fun! :)

In the Play context, children will have fun when they learn something new with the group they are in & when they are stretched to their limits.

How do children learn something new?: Through observation, action, imitation and repetition.

Most schools understand this learning process in the academic context. However, in the physical activity/sports context, many forget to apply the same principles.

During my childhood Badminton training days, our coach used to insist that we watch other players play. Good advice - though we were too restless to follow it for more than a few minutes.

Learning by doing  is the most important element of learning in the physical activity/sports context.
And you have to keep doing to ensure that you remember what you have learnt. Just because you could kick a ball well in your childhood does not mean you can do that today - unless you have been doing it regularly ever since.

When will they get stretched to their limits? When the teacher makes them do more than they think they can. More often than they'd probably do on their own. And that's when they start learning.

When children are watching, learning, practicing, repeating, they are having fun. It probably does not seem like fun to an adult watching the program. But the program is not for adults. It is for the kids.

2. Novelty: Novel props. Unique equipment. Change it every few months. Why? Very often (and as was admitted by one candid trustee) because the school leader/co-ordinators have got tired of seeing the same equipment! The kids are fine as long as they get to play! 

The assumption that children will learn new things only when there are novel props/equipment is a questionable one. While the equipment has to be functional, safe and age-appropriate, the objective of the program is to give the children the appropriate experience.

The objective is NOT to expose them to new props.

Hey, even Sachin Tendulkar uses the same hurdles, cones and hoops that a child in primary school uses.

In the physical development context, 80% of the exercises/routines done by a professional sportsperson and a child in primary school are the same. And hence, the equipment is the same.

What changes with every level is the intensity and the complexity of activities that are done. Because the props are a means to an end. Not the end in itself.

And that, to my mind, is the crux of the issue:   

The goal of an in-school sports & physical activity program is to ensure that all children learn the right skills & the right fitness at the right age. And therefore, develop a liking for sports/physical activity for life. And remain healthy & fit kids growing up to be healthy & fit adults. 

Getting them to learn the right fitness & skill is the key ingredient for them to stay healthy & fit for life. Healthy & fit - physically as well as socially. 

The adult on the ground has to facilitate the learning process while ensuring kids have fun. Not entertain the kids. It is a sports education program. Not a show on Disney.

If our children get used to a program that works only when there is a "character" on the ground who makes them jump around and laugh, how will they ever play on their own? They need to experience the FUN of observing a new skill, working hard, failing a few times and finally getting it right.

And then, they will seek out opportunities to play. Not have to be pushed by a parent or pulled by a "character" who puts on a show every evening in order to get them to play.

The right kind of fun will make a life-changing impact on our kids. The superficial fun will have an impact for those 30 minutes. And that's it.

If we want our children to learn the right fitness & the right skills at the right age, we have to introduce a certain amount of rigour. Just having them run around with no structure, no learning outcomes, no focus on practicing a certain skill till they get it right will make a mockery of the entire effort.

We risk having a completely superficial program - with lots of laughter (fun?) and novelty but no learning - if we stay with an incorrect understanding of fun and obsessed with novelty.

It is called Physical Education for a reason. It is about the Physical. And it is an integral part of Education.

Let's not trivialize it by diluting the rigour required for any education process to be effective.

The rigour creates the fun & the life-long impact.

Are rich kids not hungry for success in sports?

Over the years, I have been involved in many, many discussions around the state of sports in India.  Invariably, it gets to the point about kids, nurturing talent, the issues with the sports system etc.

And then it gets to this one point: The future champions of sports in India will come from the semi-urban and rural India.  And from kids who are from an economically lower strata.

"The rich kids are just not hungry enough", many - including me - have asserted - and received many vigorous nods in agreement.

Of late, I have been having second thoughts on this one.

I have seen some well-to-do kids  pursuing sports seriously. Not as a career - yet. But extremely involved. Attending camps in the morning before school. Tournaments on weekends. Practice. Fitness. Skills. Matches. Their life revolves around the game. I see them as hungry as I have seen anybody else.

Some of the best players India has produced - in cricket, squash, tennis, tabe tennis etc - have been from well-to-do families.

From the child's perspective, s/he is making the most of what is available - coaching, equipment, apparel, shoes, tournaments etc.

The rich kids get more of it - and make the most of it.
The poor kids get less of it - and make the most of it.

The "chasm" for the rich kids comes at the point when the child reaches 8th/9th grade. Suddenly, the options start opening up on the academic side - coaching, books, online resources, quizzes, contests etc.
And the child is urged to make the most of what is available.  It also makes sense for the child to evaluate sports v/s academics.

Barring a few geniuses, most kids in 8th/9th don't really know where they stand wrt the national/international circuits.  Many of the dominant national junior or sub-junior champs burnout and do not really make it to the top senior nationals. So, a child in 8th grade doesn't really have enough information to conclude whether he is good enough in the sport and therefore is it worth pursuing as a career.

But, unlike the poor child, the rich child has few extremely well-configured choices.

It is, therefore, not the lack of hunger in the rich child that prevents him from making it big in sports. It is the presence of choice. Of alternate career paths. Of parents who can buy them a seat in a US university.

The rich child is as hungry for success in sport as the poor child. The poor child just has no choice. He has to succeed.

Eliminating choice, not developing hunger, as a strategy for success. Interesting, what? 

Education - the amazingly unique "business"!

Over the last 4 years, I have had the good fortune of spending quality time with nearly 500 school leaders personally, many education service providers with longer experience in the space and in the process, getting to understand the K-12 education system in India.

I have been amazed at how unique the Education "business" is. Here are some of the aspects that I found unique:

1. Is it a business? or is it a social service?: Government regulation requires K-12 schools to be run as Trusts. Most (not all) schools are run like a business with an operating "service company" model to handle the not-for-profit Trust related regulation. Yes, not-for-profit does not mean zero-cost and that it has to keep making losses. In the process, many school leaders are doing a tough balancing act between behaving like a business and doing social good. Many service providers make a pitch to the school as a business ("Hey, we charge X. You charge parents X + 25%!") as against a pitch around improving the quality of education being provided.
2. No more high moral ground: In this balance between business and social service, Parents are increasingly seeing the school as another business; another provider of a service that they buy. As against almost feeling obliged that the organisation is  taking efforts to educate their kids at a reasonable cost. And in the process, schools are losing the high moral ground that they had in dealings with parents. As a result of this, many well-meaning schools are struggling to introduce new initiatives that involve some additional expense. The trust deficit between the parents and the school shows up at such times and hurts everyone in the system - especially the children.
3. Inadequate good quality talent available: Once schools lose the high moral ground, so do the folks associated with the organisation. With the social standing of being a teacher getting diluted, schools are having trouble finding good quality talent. Earlier, the respect that a teacher got in the community, probably, compensated for the lower pay package. Once money - and not social good - becomes the primary attraction for taking up a teaching job, the potential teaching community has many other better paying options. But again, most business continue to invest in good quality talent because it has a direct impact on the quality of service - as perceived by the consumer or the customer.
4. The consumer of the service is not the customer: My child "consumes" the "service" of the school. I pay the bill and am the customer. My child is the consumer. I do not directly experience the service & therefore cannot course-correct. So, teacher quality is not something I can give direct feedback on. (And maybe, this is why most schools emphasise the "infrastructure" - IT enabled classrooms, sports facilities, maths/english labs etc. And not the quality of teachers)
5. The consumer of the service does not know what is good quality: My child does not know what is "good quality" in Education. And given the power equation, has very little say in demanding good quality. The only way the customer (parent) can check is to keep spending time with the child - and of course, see the year-end exam results. 
6. The customer also does not know what is good quality: Firstly, the service delivery process is completely opaque. How many parents have actually seen a teacher teach their child? In PTMs, only the Principal or Vice-Principal speaks publicly. The teachers are only trusted to speak to the parents in a one-on-one manner and on very specific issues like "Your child is good at Maths" "Your child is very well behaved". Stuff for which you have no counters as the experience is one-sided. The parent is not an educationist who knows exactly what, how and when a child should be learning. And beyond the 1st or 2nd standard, most parents will not be able to judge whether the child is learning the right things and learning them well. This is true for academics more than co-scholastic. In sports, art, music etc, most parents believe they know more than the school!
7. The assessment of good quality is done by the provider: The person who teaches my child sets the exams, corrects the paper and gives the marks. So, if my child gets 98%, my child and I feel we are getting good quality. The parent does not have any independent means to judge the quality. Again, in co-scholastic areas, parents are able to judge by just observing their child dance better or play better. Not always true for academics as parents might not be qualified to judge improvement. Hence exam results as the only barometer.
8. No after-sales support: Firstly, after-sales support kicks in when there is a clear case of poor quality in delivery. That itself is a challenge in the Education business context. In case your child gets poor results, there is no after-sales support. In many cases, as a parent, you will be told that your kid is not paying attention in class, you are not spending enough time after-school supporting the child etc. The after-sales support is some condescending advice that you need to do more work! 
9. No benchmarks of of good quality: Till 10th grade or 12th grade, all assessments are limited to the school. Only in 10th or 12th do the students realize where they stand wrt the larger student population. And it is too late to do anything by then. Refer point above about after-sales support.
10. High switching costs. Therefore high "ARPU - average revenue per user": Apart from the registration fees charged by the school that hinder switching, many other factors add to the high switching costs experienced by the customer. E.g. Kids make friends in schools; the school is located nearby; the other schools - of the same Board - do not have vacancies etc. This translates into a lot of grumbling when fees are hiked - but everybody lines up to pay them. And so, high and predictable ARPUs over a 10-12 year period.
11. High entry barriers: The process for getting permission to set up a school is not trivial. Also, a school setup is capital intensive unless you have the political/real-estate leverage to get low-cost land for the school in a decent location. Else, like some of the schools we work with, it takes decades to grow from a "I started with a few children coming to my home" to a 1000 child school with its own infrastructure.
12. Never ending demand: Majority of kids will always go to school (assuming their parents can afford it) - in spite of MOOCs, home-schooling and all other ideas. And there are many, many more kids coming in the years ahead.
13. The consumer has no voice. The person most affected by all the points above and the decisions taken by the parent, teachers, Principals, government etc is the child. And the child has no say in any of these matters. 
14. The consumer is not interested in the service! Children do not want to go to school. Parents want their kids to go to school. :) And hence, the whole pontification around "Do you know how hard your parents are working to send you to school? And you are wasting your time having fun instead of studying hard!" does not work. Am sure the kids are thinking "But I did not want to come here in the first place!". Since the consumer is not interested in the service in the first place, behaviors like demanding quality; making the most of the opportunity etc are not designed into the system. 

If the consumer (the child) had the choice, there would be no schools at all! :) There is another school of thought that has data to prove that kids learn better by themselves (but that's the subject of another post)

I can't think of many other businesses that have such unique characteristics. Many of these factors will not change in a hurry - regulation, parent activism or otherwise.

In summary, the Education business sounds like a combination of:

1. A social enterprise (Balancing profits with a positive social impact)
2. A monopoly enterprise (Poor customer choice. High entry barriers. High switching costs)

The ideal combination is to leverage the monopoly characteristics for a larger inherently positive social impact.

But for each school, the combination will be unique. And each school promoter has to make that choice.

Why are we obsessed with peak performance?

Over the last 10 years of trying to make a difference to kids & sports, within minutes of getting introduced to someone, the first few questions that I have been asked  have been:

"So, do you develop kids who are talented?" "How do you identify talented kids?" etc etc.


The relentless focus on figuring out whether the child is a hidden genius - and if there is even half a chance of that, what are you doing about it?

And every time I say, "We are trying to get kids to play. Because they should play. Not because they should win a medal or a tournament", invariably  I get a strange look.

And then get some unconvincing remarks like "Yes, teamwork is also important. Kids learn so much from sports. So what if they are not playing for the country?"

I thought this was an India-specific issue but found out that this is the same across UK, Australia, US and other European countries. Places where I thought folks were more evolved and there was a "culture for sports" - but again, just the same obsession with peak performance.  Team play is an after-thought.

Why are we - as a human society - obsessed with peak performance? Why this instinctive need to check if our child maybe, just maybe, the world's best at something? And if not, maybe if we push him/her a little here, train him a little there, start a few years earlier - then maybe, just maybe he might turn out to be the world beater we want him to be.

Here's my take:

In our evolutionary history, the male would go hunting in groups and bring back food for the tribe. And in the hunting process, there would be people who would push the animal(s) towards a particular area - and then the "chief" or the few alpha males who were the best hunters/athletes/strongest would make the "kill. Thereby ensuring that the tribe survived.

The hunting process requires a "peak performance" from one of the team members. Else the tribe would go hungry. And hence, our evolutionary, instinctive, hard-wired obsession for signs of peak performance in our children. Will she be the one who will save our tribe from hunger? Even if the chances are low, if indeed she turns out to be "The One", the gains are tremendous. And hence worth obsessing about.

But today, we are not hunting in the jungle anymore. The "modern jungle" requires collaboration more than peak performance. The most successful "hunters" in the modern jungle are those that can work well with diverse team members. And so, for the modern tribe to not go hungry, the modern hunter has to be a team player.

Today's society needs more team players to make progress. Collaboration is the largest issue faced by large and small organisations. And our instinctive focus on peak performance is coming in the way of creating good team players.

Play for the sake of play. Recreational sports - as it is called - creates the situations that help children understand how to play in a team, settle disputes without an external arbitrator, understand what it takes to get the team to follow their lead etc.

Playing for glory, for medals is very different. Peak performance sport, by nature, is intensely competitive and hence not amenable to collaboration.

Survival of the Fittest is still true. But Fitness is now about your Team Play abilities. Not individual genius. Genghis Khan is a good example. Building business the Genghis Khan Way - how he built the largest empire in history by understanding how to work with people - and with his enemies' minds.

"May the best man win" should be replaced with "May the best team man win"

It is time for us to forcibly calm our instincts that seek peak performance assuming that we are still in the "old jungle" - and encourage behavior that gets our kids ready for the modern jungle.

Outsourcing in schools

Having met nearly 400 school leaders (Principals/Trustees) and many other school service providers in the last 4 years at EduSports, I have been fascinated with the way schools have been approaching the school service provider ecosystem.


Many school leaders  have posed the question, "So many people like you have started offering solutions to schools. English Labs, Math labs, Science labs - and now even sports is being outsourced"

And the real angst was in this one: "So, what are the school leaders supposed to do? Just provide the building and the Board affiliations?"

The entire ICT revolution was probably not seen as an outsourcing - but more as a fundamental improvement in the way our kids should be taught. While there are strongly held views about the efficacy of this medium, in my understanding, this was not seen as outsourcing.  It was seen as an upgrade up of school infrastructure.

Outsourcing seems to be seen as a sign of weakness. A sign that you have admitted defeat on that particular front - and hence you need a partner.

While "outsourcing" is an easy way of defining what is currently happening between schools & education service providers in India, I think there is one significant from the classical outsourcing that we have seen like outsourcing software to India or manufacturing to China:

In classical outsourcing, customers outsource their non-core functions. Customers retain their core function(s)  .

While schools have been outsourcing buses, meals, uniforms, books etc for years, the in-school education was always their core function.

In what is being called "outsourcing in schools", schools are being offered programs by service providers to help them deliver on  their core function - to educate kids.

For many years, schools have been focused inward in working with their teachers & resources. And the most successful schools were those that did a great job of this.

Given the reality of the school system wrt availability of trained teachers, attrition, inability of a school to invest in high quality content/tools/assessments for a particular subject and competition between schools, it seems that schools have to partner with 3rd party service providers to deliver on the promise of "holistic" education.

Like any outsourced partner, the service providers are able to invest significantly higher (than an individual school) in the issues related to educating children on that particular subject.

And hence the angst: "So, what are school leaders supposed to do?"

In my view, the core function of the school leadership & the teachers will evolve given the reality of the K-12 education sector.

The ability to make a school work in partnership with the in-school staff and the service providers will soon become the key value that a school management will bring to the table.

Integrating the service providers inputs with the rhythm of the school will start becoming a competitive edge.

Can a school reduce costs by leveraging a service providers' content team - or it's ability to source certain items at a larger scale?
Can a school integrate its existing assessment systems with the service providers' systems to provide an integrated view to the parent?
Can a school plan its calendar so that it can leverage the service providers' portfolio?
Can the school teachers deliver a better educational experience to the children?

Defining the vision, the values & the culture and then finding service providers who align with these will become the key success criteria. And the really critical part will be to make sure that the partnerships actually deliver value to the children & parents. Not just remain a marketing gimmick to convince parents that the school has a "tick mark" against that subject.

Going ahead, the schools might have to consider a balance between an inward focus - of defining their values, vision etc along with getting the right in-school team - and an outward focus - of finding the right partners who can help them deliver on their vision.

In the end, the parents want a good quality education for their wards. Who provides them - In-school teachers or service providers - doesn't really matter.

And maybe the word "outsourcing" will get replaced with "partnering" - because over the last 4 years and across nearly 300 schools in 70 cities now, the most successful implementation of our EduSports program has been in "Partner Schools" that really look at us - not as a vendor - but as a partner in delivering a better sports education experience to the child.

The fear of falling.

All this while, in getting kids to play, I have been focussed on ensuring that kids get the right fitness and the right skills at the right age - and hence enjoy the playing experience - and hence play for life. All very logical.

Recently, I realised that we have missed a critical component.

Realised this when my 6 year old son insisted on going to the branch of the SPT academy that was a 20 minute drive away from home. And in the mornings on the weekend.

Not the one that was just a 5 minute walk away from home - that was using a school's ground on the weekend - and more conveniently, in the afternoon.

As a parent, it was very tempting to find a way to convince him to go to the place next door. Drop him off. Go home. Have some tea. Read a book. Pick him up.

So, I tried to convince him. But then he disarmingly told me: "Because the other place has grass"

And there it was. So clear for everybody to see. But I had missed it.

Grass.

The school nearby had a plain ground. Just plain mud. The typical Bangalore Red mud. Slightly sandy. Hard surface.  And the other place had green grass fields.

And then the penny dropped. He refuses to "dribble" in the apartment complex where we live. Fine with kicking the ball around. Prefers cricket to football in the apartment complex.

And I then realised that he was developing a fear of falling on the hard surface.

And I don't blame him.

My palms still have marks from the injuries I got while playing football on the hard grounds of IIM Bangalore back in 1993-95. Nearly 20 years ago!

Remember the Indian cricket team not diving while fielding - till recently? No wonder - as the grounds they grew up on were hard, rough and full of gravel. One full-fledged dive would have put them out of contention for a few matches due to the injuries!

And I just can't help wondering how much the fear of falling is impacting the way kids play. Making that extra effort, going for the less-than-half-chance and then making it happen is what you remember from a game. And in the process, you hurt yourself.  I keep telling my son "Well done!" whenever he comes back with a bruise after a game.

For a 6 year-old, falling on a concrete surface or a rough ground can be quite an un-nerving experience.

So, if our kids have a fear of falling, are they really playing to their potential? Are they going after the half-chances? Will they really experience the "magic of sport"? or have such an antiseptic version that it is just not exciting enough?

Just helping them find a small spot of grass to play on can remove the fear of falling.

Now, how difficult can that be? :)