My half-an-hour interview with cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle and his wife Anita Bhogle is interrupted more than half-a-dozen times by cricket-related phone calls for Harsha and fans stopping by to shake his hand and tell him earnestly that he's their favourite commentator.
So it's easy to believe Anita when she says that the hardest part about working with her husband is dealing with his crazy schedules and multi-tasking. The two were in town for the launch of their book The Winning Way: Learnings from Sport for Managers at Sheraton Park Hotel and Towers.
“He's always in the middle of a million things,” she laughs, “which is why it took us two years to finish the book! But it's been a very satisfying experience as well.”
Harsha hangs up and adds: “Well, the hardest part for me was working with someone as ridiculously organised as her. She'd finish her bits bang on time and the pressure would be on me!”
Of course, this isn't the first time this accomplished husband-and-wife pair — both IIM Ahmedabad graduates — has worked together. The Winning Way , is a culmination of the work they've done together with their sports-based communication consultancy Prosearch over the last 10 years, encapsulating in 200 pages the essence of their popular ‘The Winning Way' workshop of business gyan drawn from the world of sporting champions.
The result is a lively book filled with sports anecdotes and easy-to-relate-to insights on translating the winning strategies of sports teams to a corporate environment.
“The conversational style of the book was a very conscious decision on our part; we didn't want it to be preachy at all,” says Harsha. Adds Anita: “That's how our presentations are as well. Harsha has a very chatty style, and is a good storyteller.”
The book, published by Westland, is priced at Rs. 200, another conscious decision on their part, says Harsha: “We wanted as many people as possible to be able to afford the book.”
Over the years, the pair has done over 300 sessions with some of the country's top companies, including Unilever, Glaxo SmithKline, Colgate and more, and their learnings just kept coming. Ask Harsha, for instance, what the IPL can teach, and you get some startling — and very convincing — parallels between the challenges faced by IPL teams and software companies today. “The IPL is a fascinating laboratory,” he says.
But they're careful to add that one can't stretch the parallels between business and sport too far. “There are some differences you can't ignore; for instance, 20 minutes can turn a match around, but that doesn't happen in business,” says Harsha.
So what's next for this dynamic duo? Anita has started working on a digital learning content library, ‘Biz Punditz', which is available on a new technology platform. “The content is similar to what we're doing now, but not limited to sport,” she says.
Harsha won't be part of this project, but then he — as always — has more than enough on his plate. “I have my hands full with cricket and ‘The Winning Way' workshops,” he says, adding with a smile: “It's a case of ‘yours, mine and ours'!”
