There are so many Irfan Pathan’s in our corporate World…
The poster or the trailer creates the first impression- or to say a long lasting one till it is shattered. The Bollywood sagas are so much defined by this trend- the value however is realized only when one gets into the rigorous process of watching it- pre booking the tickets through a cool app, getting hold of oversized packs of popcorns and colas along with an Indian twist of samosas and bhels in the interval and in the midst of all of this- watching the flick. In cases where you don’t like the time spent, you realize that few of them do have good stories, refreshing screenplays & perfect dialogues only to be spoilt by ‘wrong casting’. Yes, the movie would have had a genuine spark if some-one else had portrayed the character. The case of having a rabbit as a pet and expecting it to guard the house or having a bunch of parrots to beautify your aquarium! Sounds absurd?
Such cases, though rare in Bollywood, are found in plenty in our professional corporate domain. People good in skill ‘x’ are made to do something ‘y’ wherein ‘x’ and ‘y’ are highly unrelated. No, these are not cases of cross functional rotational experiences (a separate debate altogether) or building blocks to achieving greatness. Not at all! These are cases of utter reversals- of usage of skills and corresponding utilization. The argument of individual realizing it and auto-correcting it soon is marred by the deceived logic of profound thinking given by few of the select leaders. ‘For some bigger candies’; ‘To become a great leader’; ‘Stepping stone to greatness’- the probability of occurrence being lesser than Rohit Sharma scoring in an important and critical match. This marks the downfall and the gradual realization on themes such as ‘Oh, I was good at doing analytics but ended up doing the creative bit’; ‘My strength lied in managing people, but here I am managing myself and my laptop screen’. The list being endless. And of course, the role of ‘The Boss’ or ‘The Mentor’ cannot be ignored.
Classic case of Irfan Pathan- Crafty left arm swing bowler enticed/forced/motivated to develop the skills of swashbuckling left handed batting! A grave failure backed by his super mentor! There are few rare mentors who pluck you out to put you on the correct path also- ‘Sanath Jayasurya’s opening the batting being the perfect example’. Of course in today’s world of opportunity, the individual has the ability to auto-correct this but sometimes the journey of self-discovery becomes a tad too long! As is the case of our young dynamic leader having the beautifully designed golden spoon trying to find the value of per kg of tin!
