What’s our current game-plan?

In this post, Full Stack Business Analyst Willem Swanepoel, looks to cricket for an example of how sometimes shifting a game plan is better than sticking to one that isn’t working. Willem leads up our retail and FMCG business analytics project, and has been with Full Stack since September 2015. 

As we head into [yet another] ICC Cricket Tournament, this time the shorter format of the game, I am again reminded of how everything is different and yet everything is the same. Take the story of Hashim Amla.

Back in the day Amla was a top performer for his franchise, but every critic who knew something about cricket said that he would not make it on the international scene, “especially not in the Test arena”. This might seem ridiculous now, considering as a batsman he is rated as 4th and 3rd in the ICC Test and ODI rankings respectively. However back then this argument was sound logic based on one fact – he has a “strange” technique.

Long story short, he made his debut in 2004 against India and had great success. He singlehandedly won us a number of games – yet everyone was comparing him to Jacques Kallis – a technical genius – and kept on saying that he will never be as successful as Kallis. Then, low-and-behold, came the inevitable slump that all batsmen have, and even though he was still scoring some runs, it seemed laboured and it was at a very slow rate. And although he’s average never really dropped below 35, it seemed like the critics might have been right.

I remember watching a game where Amla failed to score and Kepler Wessels said in the commentary that he “was working extremely hard on his technique” – and suddenly his slump of form started to make sense… and I reckon Amla came to the same conclusion. Not long after that game it seems Amla made the decision to focus on runs rather than technique, and not only did his form improve despite him still having his strange stance,  but in 2008 he also made his ODI debut and he has been named in the World Test XI since 2010.

So how is this relevant to Full Stack, or anything other than cricket for that matter… well it’s simple. Businesses nowadays are playing the ODI format, we need to provide quality products and services in a LIMITED amount of time. We need to realize, as Amla did, that perfect technique is the state of the output and not an output itself. Perfection is a state that, by the definition of continuous improvement, can never be reached but should always be strived towards.

Winning the game is an output, coding an application that works well is an output, delivering on deadlines is an output. We should realize, as Amla did, that if professionals deliver the required outputs then naturally they will improve their technique, thereby helping them to deliver even better outputs and thus move closer to the state of perfection.

So in comparison with Amla and all professionals, even though our industry is different, we should strive to do the same.