MS Dhoni & The Success Trap: Important Lesson For Entrepreneurs

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MS Dhoni embodied the 'I don't care about historyâ I am here to be the best and do things which I think are correct' attitude that comes from a person who is 'ravenous' for success and is a risk-taker at heart. This enabled him to see success that no Indian captain had ever seen in his career. No 1 in Tests, No 1 in T20, world champions in 50 overs and all these in a space of three years. This is equivalent to probably growing a company 10x in a year and then again 10x in another two years, making it 100x in three years. It is very easy for the leader to want to play it safe at this stage and try and 'maintain' its position in the market. The risk of failing in the eyes of others and his own is now very high which deals a further psychological blow to the leader's ability to innovate and take some leaps into the unknown. Don't get me wrong here. I am not, for a minute, advocating the cavalier, devil-may-care attitude that this entrepreneur might have had when he started. But the fact still remains that if the leader is not able to continue to make mistakes (even if in a measured fashion), the winning streak which got him here in the first place will also slowly desert him.

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What I loved about Dhoni was the fact that he represented the hunger that needs to exist in the Indian cities (beyond the six large ones) if we are to dominate the better part of this century. He had nothing to lose and so made his own rules (his unconventional batting is ample proof of that) and took risks (like getting Joginder Sharma to bowl the last over of the T20 final or getting Ashwin to bowl within the first six overs in the IPL) which came off more often than not. This rubbed off on the Indian team and we saw a dramatic rise during 2007-2010, reaching its pinnacle in the 50 over World Cup win.