Good Bye Afridi

You dared to disagree with honorable king, the genius of all times, the greatest chairman of cricket history, someone who knows all the rules and regulations of the game and management. He managed lots of selection committees, captains of cricket and thousands of people from only one organization. You did not know you were playing with fire. You did not know he is Ghulam Muhammad of Pakistan cricket. He is great, he is the best, he is matchless and you thought you could win against his ego??? How silly are you…

One of the greatest batsmen of the cricket history, Muhammad Yousuf dared to be different and got punished. You think, making over 17000 runs at international level and having an inspirational personality for rest of the world means you can impress the god of the cricket board? You are so stupid, Lala…

You think, Younis could have played world cup without saying sorry to the legendary character Mr. Ijazz Butt. He can afford to lose from any nation but not from his own players. He did not try to save Asif, Amir, Butt & Zulqarnain’s careers and disowned them as soon as they went against him.

You know, he is matchless. He has removed three selection committees and NINE captains in his two-and-half-years reign. He is the consistent most chairman of cricket board. He removed and appointed Shoaib Malik, he appointed and removed Younis Khan. He appointed and removed Muhammad Yousuf, Salman Butt was fortunate enough for not being removed by him but by the ICC. He appointed an out-of-sight player Misbah as test captain and now gave him a potential opportunity for the same game by removing you.
He did the same to coaches Jeof Lawson and Intikhab Alam and appointed Waqar Younis as coach. And about selectors, the story is same; Abdul Qadir had same issue with chairman PCB that he interferes and does not let him do his job, independently. Iqbal Qasim was the second one to go and then he found Mohsin Khan who does not go against chariman’s will. How dare you thought to do this, Afridi.

Dear Afridi, don’t you know what a phenomenal career he has? He played 8 test match for Pakistan and made 279 runs with an amazing average of 19.92runs. and you have played 27 test and 325 ODI matches only. You have made 6695 runs in ODIs only and have hit 289 sixes. The count of your sixes is just above the total runs of the legendry Ijazz Butt. You have taken 315 wickets in ODIs onlyh. Your records are not as impressive as his are.

What maximum you could do for us. You could earn world records for us, you could win victories for us, you could become highest wicket taker in world cup, you could win matches single handedly, you could bring people to the stadiums, you could hit maximum sixes, you could become world’s favorite and reliable all-rounder, you could stand with your decisions, you could tell rightly people about their job, you could lead the team to the semifinals after 12 year, You could win hearts of the nation?

And you think, it was sufficient to win heart of the great chairman? No… No way… you have to be politician and you have to have a “Yes Boss” attitude to retain your position. Don’t you see how effective the chief selector is, without having any authority? He doesn’t select anyone who is against the chairman.

You are living in fool’s paradise, Lala. You should have done what your boss wanted. Coach, manager and captains are just the puppets in the hands of the chairman. He is such an influential personality that even patron of the cricket is not reluctant about his qualities then who are you to do so?

Come on Afridi, be a good and gentle man, pay a visit to his highness, say sorry for your actions and words and ensure that you never do what he does not like.

The request comes from the heart of a cricketer and a fan who believes that you were the only person who united the whole nation and the team after Imran Khan. We want you to play.

And “Your highness, I feel sorry on the behalf of these three below average (Yousuf, Younis & Afridi) cricketers, sir. They did not know what mistakes they have been making. They never knew they had to surrender. They were stupid because they thought that they deserved to be handled in a better way because they were good performers. You have done an excellent job by telling them how to behave.

Sir, just one request on the behalf of the whole nation and the cricketers, for God’s sake, have pity on us and leave us alone…”

Are Trainers Entertainers?

Human resource development is the most neglected area of the organizations operating in Pakistan. The organizations which invest money on human development can be counted on finger tips.  It is the corporate sector only that invests few pennies on the training and development of their employees, however most of the organizations believe that investment on human development is not more than a waste of money. They invest money on this only when there is a boom in the industry but as soon as the trend goes downwards, they reduce the training budget. Although training can improve productivity and overall performance of the employees yet the Pakistani organizations take it as a burden. They do not have a mature training culture. Training has never been the organizations’ first priority.

Let’s discuss the reasons:

TRAINING IS NOTHING BUT A RECREATIONAL ACTIVITY: Unfortunately, trainings are confused with the recreational activities. Instead of having outdoor activities, HR arranges trainings for the employees and asks the trainers to develop such activities which could entertain the participants. These activities keep the energy level of the training high but do not groom the employees; for the focus of the training remains fun-oriented instead of learning-oriented.

TRAINING-NEED-ANALYSIS MISSING:Organizations and trainers, both are least interested in having Training Need Analysis (TNAs) before conducting training sessions. It is largely observed that the HR departments ask external trainers to provide topics on which employees should be trained instead of telling them the areas of improvement of their employees and suggesting topics for the trainings. As a result, the trainers design a generic training and conduct it without paying any heed to the difference of the organizations, their cultures and challenges. A quite natural question arises; how a training program with the same contents can be equally beneficial for every organization in question?

CONTENT AGAINST JDs (Job Descriptions):Organizations try to accommodate maximum number of employees in one training program even if the program does not relate to their job descriptions. This is the only reason why employees do not take interest in the training program. I have come across so many trainings which were not beneficial for the trainees because the content had no relation with their day-to-day job. They were more keen to sleep during the training hours, and more eager to have lunch and tea during the breaks in-between.

TRAINERS ARE ENTERTAINERS?Learning through fun can be one way of training people in a very effective manner but this is not the only way of training them. There are more ways of training like using case studies, brainstorming sessions, success stories, tests, live examples and others which can be related to the employees’ day-to-day business however, in order to keep the training interesting and alive, trainers have to miss the productive but relatively unpopular methods; thus a session, at the end of the day, proves to be an utterly unproductive session. Such trainings do not pay back as they do not improve their employees’ overall performance. Trainers should focus on the overall productivity by using activities as a means of communication instead of playing a role of an entertainer. If organizations aspire to entertain the employees at all, they should arrange a show with Amanat Chan, Umar Sharif & other entertainers instead of trainers. For, trainers are after all trainers. They can never be so good as a professional comedian/entertainer could be.

TRAINEES’ EXPECTATIONS: Coincidently, before going to the training room, most of the trainees do not know what they are going to learn and if the trainer has the experience and knowledge of what he is going to train on. Trainees want to enjoy a day off from the work and apply for the training without going through the objectives, prerequisites, target audience and even trainer’s profile. They do not have questions before going to the training room and rely on whatever comes to their mind during the session. This practice makes a session less productive even for their own grooming.

TRAINERS ARE UNPREPARED: For a trainer, it is a SIN to enter a training room without having the knowledge of what he is going to deliver, who is he going to deliver to, and how will the participants implement it on their work place. If any of these prerequisites remains unmet, the training goes waste without any doubts. Trainers must know different ways of communication. They should be widely read, details-oriented, skillful, friendly and positive. Market lacks professional trainers and trainees, it is trainers’ responsibility to improve the situation. Therefore they should always be well prepared and should complete their homework before entering into the training room.

THE “HAPPY SHEET” IS A GUIDELINE FOR TRAINERS: The feedback sheet is known as “Happy Sheet”. Ironically, this is so because most of the trainers get 100% scores at the end of the day. As a trainer, getting 100% scores on “Happy Sheet” is not the right way to get you evaluated. By this, you can only check how acceptable you have been. Your acceptability as a trainer does not essentially mean that the day was really productive. A trainer must give a method of evaluating the training so that organizations could get a better understanding of how much their employees improved. In other words, the happy sheet should contain the questions whose answers could reflect the qualitative difference of the trainees, and not the acceptability of the trainer.

POST-TRAINING EVALUATION SYSTEMS:While hiring trainers for the organizations, the HR should insist trainers to provide “Post Training Evaluation Method” to evaluate the results of their trainings. They should give feedback to the trainers before hiring them again. Closing the loop is the most important part of any training. It starts from Training Need Analysis (TNA), goes with Delivering Training and ends at Post Training Evaluation. Trainers must understand that the training is the only way to improve performance; if it is being neglected by the organizations then it is their fault. They need to provide a complete package where none of these points is missing.

Organizations are concerned with the performance of their employees. Therefore, the training should be designed by keeping the improvement of the intended trainees’ performance in view. Entertainment is a part of a training session; it must not be deemed as the heart of the session. An entertainment-oriented session may intrigue the true feedback which eventually may introduce anomalies into the post training evaluation system. Since there is no doubt in the fact that without the post training evaluation system, trainings stand nowhere, the post-training evaluation system must be errors-and-anomalies-free.