Play, Mastery & Careers!

Children love to play.

Children love novelty.

They love a new game, a new toy, a new anything.

After some time, the newer game is more exciting.

Till they see the next new game.

And so, the cycle continues.

Until they start to build mastery in a particular area - sports, arts, dance, music, maths, science....whatever.

And once they find that area, they focus on it. No parental push required.

Somehow, they know that they need to focus on doing the same thing better. Again and again. They get joy from small improvements. And they do not seek novelty as much as earlier.

Why do some children continue to seek novelty while others seek mastery?

Maybe children have an instinctive feel of what they are good at - and what they are not good at. Or of what they do not like to do...while still not being clear about what they want to attain mastery in.

Maybe the children who seek novelty are still seeking that one area where they would like to attain mastery.

Kind of like what we do with our careers.

There is something magical about "I started that new project and built it to Level 1" as against "I built that project from Level 1 to Level 10".

In the early years, doing the same thing again and again - but also better and better - gets seen as stagnation.

Team members - especially the younger ones - demand new projects, exciting new areas where they can test their skills and build new ones.

And once the new project becomes not-so-new, they want the next new project.

The next new game.

But mastery demands focus & depth. Not variety & superficiality.

Maybe there is a lesson from children at play.

Keep playing. Try new games, new projects, new ideas.

But if you get a shot at becoming a Master of something you love, grab it.

And then, focus. Enjoy the small improvements.

Enjoy the ride.

Is IBL the formula for all sports?

Having grown up playing Badminton, I was extremely excited about the Indian Badminton League.

For many years now, I have been following World Badminton - online, on NEO Sports and many other channels on which the various tournaments get shown.

At home, there have been multiple times that I have watched the World's Top Badminton players  - like Lin Dan and Lee Chong Wei - play a fantastic game - and my family did not really bother to watch. No questions.  Just the usual "Dad and his sports". :)

Not even my sports crazy 7 yr old boy - or my 9 yr old daughter who - unfortunately - likes to watch sports more than play them.

And now, with the IBL, both of them are really excited about the teams, they are tracking the points table, they know who the players are, they've made posters supporting "Banga Beats" etc etc.

Recently, my cricket-football crazy boy asked if we can play Badminton. Twice in a week.

And the last time, as we were heading to the court, he stated, "I am Lee Chong Wei. Who are you?"

Now, when I watch IBL on TV, my kids snuggle up and start asking me details of who is playing, who is winning, about the mysterious and dynamic out line in doubles, why there are so many "referees" etc etc.

Of course, the Indian player gets all the support at home - never mind if they have never heard of the player or after multiple days of trying, they are still having a tough time remembering the name "Kashyap" (Banga Beat's Icon Player)

Many other folks I know are following the IBL closely.  Folks that have never played or watched Badminton on TV - except when Saina was playing. And some of them have not even done that.

Before IBL, there was much better quality Badminton on TV.
Before IBL, the world's best players and much better players than the current IBL players were playing LIVE on TV.
Before IBL, the matches were shown round the clock. Multiple times.
Before IBL, hardly anybody in India knew who "Lee Chong Wei" was. Most of them did not even know who PV Sindhu was.

Before IBL, the matches involving Saina were telecast multiple times. Only the times when she won against the Chinese and the Malaysians.

But nobody watched Badminton. Nobody talked about it.

Clearly, just having access to good quality sport was not enough to get folks to follow it.

So, why is IBL getting popular?  I do not have TRP rating data - but relative to the earlier status of Badminton, more people are definitely following it.

Same sport. Lesser quality players. Poorer quality matches. And now people are watching IBL? Buying tickets for matches? Why? What changed?

In one word: Familiarity.

I think IBL has presented the magical combination of familiarity and sport.

Sport is an extremely emotional, magical, intense and often polarizing force. But in an unfamiliar context, people just shrug their shoulders and move on. The same sport is impotent. The magic is not working.

IBL - with it's city-based franchisee system & Indian players - brought in the familiarity component. The game suddenly became something personal.

The feeling that if someone, however foreign her name and looks, is part of something I can relate to, I can root for her.

And by making the Lee Chong Wei's of the world part of the Mumbai Masters, Pune Pistons, Banga Beats, Awadhe Warriors, Delhi Smashers, Hyderabad Hotshots, one important gap - of familiarity - was bridged.

Names like Taufik Hidayat, Tine Baun, Mark Zweibler, Juliane Schenk, Liew Darren, Carolina Marin.....world-class players, but unknown in India. Even some of the Indian players - like Kashyap, Sindhu, Bhat, Sai etc were unknown till recently.

Unknown players. Known cities.

And so, however foreign your looks or your name, if you play for "my city", I will cheer for you. IMO, this is not an "Indian" trait. This is a fundamentally human trait - and represents the real unifying power of sport.

What IBL has done is to connect that power of good quality sports with the power of familiarity - of the city and of other Indian players.

Yes, IPL has done it earlier and at a much larger scale. But IPL had the leverage of a cricket-crazy nation, media & sponsors.

IBL did not.

And hence the IBL way might be the solution for other sports that are in a similar situation.

Create good quality sports competitions. That is a prerequisite.

As are good venues, easy tickets access, on-time starts, family-friendly facilities, clean toilets, food for kids, some entertainment, good quality refereeing etc etc. Those are all "hygiene factors". Necessary but not sufficient for success.

The sufficiency comes from making world class sport personal. Making it familiar. Making fans relate to the players, to the team - and be able to connect with other fans on a common platform.

That said, IBL also had the advantage of most fans being able to relate to the sport of Badminton. Most folks had played it in the open, in parks or at school. Unlike, say, car-racing or adventure sport or golf - where large fan bases are unable to relate to the sport.

The sports that are able to make the personal connection with fans are the ones that will grow.

Maybe, just maybe, the IBL way is the formula for all sports.  Fingers crossed! :)

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.