FIFA World Cup important lessons-by Anuradha Singh
Waka Waka:
Shakira's anthemic song is actually a new version of an old Cameroonian song titled Tsamina. The words Waka Waka translate in English to "do it - get the task done".
Inertia is the worst kind of habit. Postponing decisions like health checkup, exercising, dieting, financial planning, changing jobs/career, training or updating skills, recruiting or firing people etc are very damaging in the long run.. Unless one applies some focus to "get the task done" things always linger. Ultimately, only loser is the person who procrastinates.
All of us lead busy lives and often can't take time out to attend to our tasks. Whether its as mundane as playing with our child , or something bigger like planning for a job change, you have to seize the moment - its not just time for Africa, it's time for you to take care of your tasks.
Past performance is no guide to future performance:
Two of the worst performing teams in this World Cup were France and Italy. For those of you who don't remember, it was these very teams that contested the 2006 World Cup finals, with Italy the ultimate winner. Both are pedigreed football playing nations and were sure shot expected to have at least gone beyond the group stage in 2010. Yet, neither one of them managed to live up to their past footballing traditions and failed miserably in the group stages itself.
The real world is very similar. Past performance is no guide to future performance. This is a statutory warning that we all see on advertising for equity offerings, yet most of us seem to ignore this because we are usually too optimistic about the future.
Always remember to keep your thinking fresh. Understand the context, objectives and always benchmark yourself with the best to avoid falling into the trap of extrapolating past performance into the future.
Right from the first match of the tournament, the buzzing sound of thousands of vuvuzelas was never far away. Whether it was TV viewers or those lucky enough to attend the games in the stadia, most fans were irritated by the collective noise of these vuvuzelas. This noise was deafening enough to act as a distraction to the real action on the playing field.
The real world is also full of noise. Minute by minute reporting of every small actions of the celebrities/experts or backing some new trends or fads by experts/consultants is made into a big deal by some top managements. So many of these so-called experts/consultants are just blowing their own vuvuzelas.
Experienced professionals just like professional footballers, have habitually learned to ignore the background noise. They recognize that the world is full of distractions. We also need to block all the surrounding noise to concentrate and focus on our goals.
The who's who of world football were playing in the tournament. Many players are national, if not global, superstars. Yet, despite their natural talent and skills, they were all handled by a manager and his staff who were constantly coaching all the superstars, monitoring their performance and conveying tactical instructions to their teams on the pitch. No one was above being coached.
Similarly, while many of us might think that we are experts in managing our professional and personal life and feel like we have world class skills, it's always useful to have a coach or advisor to give feedback or used as a sounding board specially before making the critical decisions.
Such a person can monitor our situation , give a different perspective and suggest useful changes to us so that we can improve our performance. These advisors can help in identifying certain areas where we might be taking on too much risk, or areas where we are not using our resources to our advantage.
Many players came into the tournament surrounded by a lot of hype. Ronaldo, Rooney, Kaka and Messi were the pre-ordained stars of the tournament. They were expected to set the competition alight with their dazzling ability to score goals and change the course of a game. None of them really lived up to all this hype. In fact almost all of them underperformed, perhaps with the exception of Messi in the group stages. This quartet barely scored enough goals collectively to match the individual number of goals scored by less famous players like Forlan and Muller. Sure the quartet is super talented, but if you had placed your money on them you would certainly be poorer.
In the real world as well, there are times when there is a lot of hype surrounding certain individuals or organizations. History has shown that these are the organizations/persons that inevitably end up underperforming - for instance, who can forget the appointment of Greg Chappell as Indian coach or launching of some of the Star Sons and their big budget movies.
In fact, a tried and tested way is to look for talent and potential. Just like nobody expected Forlan and Muller to be among the top scorers of the tournament, chances are that there are a lot of under hyped names in the market that will be the best performing in future.
There is a lot of formula preaching here. And pretty shallow too. On the one hand we encourage people to enjoy themselves, achieve work life balance, bethemselves etc. On theother hand you also complain about vuvuzelas. Come on, guys have paid to come watch and enjoy themselves. If vuvuzelas help them to express their delight why can't we understand let them have their fun?
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Superb
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we organized content,keep it up!
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Great. Forget preaching aspect. see message in it, learn and move ahead
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Great. Forget preaching aspect. see message in it, learn and move ahead
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Very True and a different dimension of the things.
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It was a great piece of analytical thinking and then putting it across succinctly. Good show1I wish I could 'VUVUZELA' it!!
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It was a great piece of analytical thinking and then putting it across succinctly. Good show1I wish I could 'VUVUZELA' it!!
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It was a great piece of analytical thinking and then putting it across succinctly. Good show1I wish I could 'VUVUZELA' it!!
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Excellent. Realistic and truthful analysis to think and change, where only the current values play betetr than earlier values of ones attunment to any topic you are subjected to.
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Excellent , like a fine new breez . Putting across the eternal messages with current context is exemplary ! well done !