The Skerrit/Shallow administration – Has it made a difference to West Indies cricket?

The Skerritt/Shallow administration knew that it had to introduce a cricket-centric focus and a new way of thinking to escape a destructive cul-de-sac and a longstanding failure spiral. They created a new paradigm that is in accord with Albert Einstein’s thinking about problem solving: “The problems we have created as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems that we cannot solve at the same level as they were created.”

Not everyone will accept the president’s new paradigm. Many of them will oppose it and place obstacles in the way to derail it. That’s the norm. However, he should understand that when he is dealing with people, he is not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotions, limiting beliefs and prejudices; creatures who are motivated by self-importance, pride, greed and fear.

Management of diversity and interdependence inside and outside CWI are critically important; the vertical relationships and especially the lateral relationships over which the board has no direct power or control. In that respect CWI has mended lots of fences and has made significant progress in building cooperative and harmonious relationships. Most people issues are not new. They have been around for a long time. Constantly rediscovering them and making them relevant for today’s circumstances and challenges are extremely significant. People are often enamoured by and drawn to what’s new and sometimes unproven, but they must never forget what actually works. They should also remember that conventional wisdom and conventional approaches still have great value.  Regarding people issues, the fundamentals of what works have not changed; they have remained constant throughout the years.

In the case of critics and pessimists, the leadership of CWI should listen to them, but at the same time should remember the  smart words of Robert Frost: “Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half have nothing to say and keep saying it.”

Preventing and managing conflict should be a first important priority of the current administration.  MS Dhoni, the former captain of Team India, once told me that the main difference between great teams and the others is the interval between mistakes. Great teams make a mistake, learn from it and hardly ever repeat it. But lesser teams make several mistakes and keep repeating them at regular intervals.  Repeating the mistakes of the Cameron administration would be the greatest sin that the  current leaders of CWI can commit.

There are basically four ways to prevent and manage conflict.  The Cameron administration used two of them, both of which intensified rather than decrease conflict.

First is the fight/litigate approach, the preferred method of the last administration. It was the worst of the four options because it resulted in hostility, resentment poor communication, and win/lose outcomes.

The second method is bargaining and compromise where both sides give up something in order to gain something else. Because of toxic hostility between the board and its players this method hardly came into play.

The third approach, identify and remove the cause of the problem was CWI’s second choice. This approach assumes that once the  perceived cause is removed, things would automatically return to normal. We know that in a complex organisation this does not happen. The removal of Chris Gayle, Dwayne Bravo, Darren Bravo, Daren Sammy and Phil Simmons did not improve the performance or internal dynamics of the team.

Removing the dictator does not guarantee an automatic return to democracy. Hence, we should not expect the performance of a sports organization to automatically improve when its autocratic president is removed.

Complex systems do not work that way. While the autocrat is in power, the effects, adjustments, bad habits and negative forces become so widespread that removing him would not by itself be enough to change and improve the culture, function or performance of the organization. Loyalty to the deposed leader, acquired bad habits and negative forces linger on for a while until the new leadership  neutralises  them.   In medical parlance these negative remnants could be  likened to the metastases of a cancerous growth.

The fourth approach, the design idiom, is the best way to prevent and handle conflict; a method that was entirely foreign to the last administration. While adversarial thinking, compromise, analysis and problem solving by removing the cause are about the past, design or creative thinking is about the future. Design thinking  is about creating something that wasn’t there before, something that has a sense of purpose and a sense of fit. Things are brought together in a way that fulfills some purpose or vision. In the design idiom, form and structure should always follow and fit purpose and function. This approach encourages exploratory thinking and usually results in win/win outcomes from which  all parties benefit. So how can CWI change its perspective and alter its approach to  solving problems, handling setbacks and capitalising on opportunities? It can do so by looking at them differently and by assessing them as situations that require a special kind of thinking – design thinking.

Too often we in the Caribbean believe that we are not good enough; something is not working and needs to be fixed; something is missing; something needs to be added to make us worthwhile. These limiting beliefs often hide the wealth within us.

Let’s not waste time searching for a secret to success. That secret already lies within us. Let’s work instead to develop our own system of success.  Let’s focus on what we can learn, achieve, and become; the attitude and vision that Worrell and Lloyd imprinted in the minds of their players during their twenty-year reign as world champions.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Finally, our cricket supporters should understand that success in cricket must first be created in the mind, then planned and pursued diligently over time. It does not happen all at once or in a straight line. It is a journey that takes time, energy, patience and perseverance and is punctuated by ups and downs, successes and failures. Enjoyment of that journey is a powerful stimulus for change, growth, and development.