KP is not the right captain for England

The first test of the truncated Indian tour has exposed KP's weaknesses as a captain. On the 4th and 5th days, the England team needed a secure, confident and agile captain. Instead they got a man more worried about his form with the bat than someone able to competently lead the team with well thought through tactics.

Firstly, it was the dithering about in the final session on the 4th day. There seemed to be no impetus to drive the score on and declare leaving a short time left in the day to get in amoungst the Indian batsmen. Instead the English batsmen scored just a few runs and lost easy wickets all of which would have boosted Indian confidence. No guidance on what to do from KP that I could see.

Secondly, there was the way in which we allowed the Indian batsmen to take the game over. Flintoff was the only bowler able to keep them on a tight leash and yet again Anderson decided to have an off day and the first ball from Harmison went wide when it should have been tight and hard to play. All of which sent the Indians a message that put them pyschologically on top. If Vaughan had been in charge, I think it would have been a very different match.

KP is a lieutenant. He's like Flintoff. Give him an order and he'll eagerly take on the challenge and arrive back having completed the job with a grin on his face. Give him a wider tactical remit and he's all puppy-dog eagerness at first but as soon as complex requirements rear their heads he's got his head in the sand and is just hoping that things work out alright rather than continually thinking of how the game can be pulled back to Englands advantage like Vaughan would have done.

2009 is going to be a long and disappointing summer of cricket.

Loyal & Faithful vs Competent

Recently there was a question on LinkedIn that asked if the choice had to be made whether a manager should retain a loyal and faithful employee with limited competence or a competent employee with limited loyalty.

My answer was:

A competent employee is always the best choice. His loyalty is your responsibility. If you are a good leader and keep them interested in their work, give them stretch targets and opportunities for growth along with a compensation package that reflect their performance then they will be loyal. Choosing someone who is loyal & faithful, but limited competence is a sign of weak management.

What has surprised me is the number of people who have gone for the loyal and faithful employee with limited competence and excused themselves by talking about training and development for the incompetent employee. I guess training and development might help, but its just as likely to be throwing good money after bad. I'd rather use that money to retain and incentivise the competent employee encouraging loyalty.

To be blunt, maybe this is why so many companies out there are in trouble right now, the need for leaders to cover up their own lack of leadership skill by retaining loyal and faithful employees who aren't very good at what they do will eventually drag a company down. Trouble is, if a leader is allowed to get away with doing this, then the attitude goes right the way to the top - keeping a loyal and faithful leader on board who lacks competence as a leader is downright dangerous.

Escalating Feature Lists

What factors now influence your next mobile phone? I've just taken ownership of a HTC Touch HD, thanks to Orange who were very eager to retain my business considering the deal they did for me! Whatever, the lack of a flash on the phone's camera nearly stopped me going for it! What has the world come to, it's a phone for god's sake and I nearly made the decision based on the phone's flash, interesting. However, what it does illustrate is the ever escalating list of features on all sorts of devices that customers now take for granted meaning it's becoming increasingly difficult to stand out from the crowd in an increasingly crowded market space, whatever the electronic device happens to be.

The phone part I now take for granted, but previously I've chosen a phone on size, looks, bluetooth, voice-based dialling, but now it's the phone's flash capability! What I've always wanted and am now able to just about get in the Touch HD is a single device that meets all my mobile needs: Phone, SMS, Email both Exchange and POP3 based, MP3 player, Camera, Video player, 3G web access and Bluetooth. By today's standards not an exceptional list, but thinking back to my Nokia 8310 which I chose simply on the size of it my expectations were a whole lot lower.

Even with all these features though, I'm still not content. Having played with the Touch HD for a week now, there are many things I think could be done to improve the phone and for the most part it's in the Touch HD Flo 3D interface where further work would have improved the experience. For instance, I love being able to flick through my SMS messages and watch them flow on and off the screen in high-res, but to send a text, I have to drop back in to the clunky windows interface. Grr. The MP3 player won't let me easily flick through my albums, instead I have to flick track by track unless I go to the specific Album list. Again, Grr. That's just two little niggles (there are others) where the interface lets itself down where a bit more effort from the programmers would have greatly enhanced the experience. Even something as simple as setting the Windows interface to match the same black/white/green colours of the Touch HD would have helped!

Anyway, perhaps I'm just being a bit over-demanding, but I can't be the only one. I really feel for the manufacturers, the feature list can't continue to get fatter and fatter, somewhere along the line the emphasis is going to have to change and I'm fairly certain that it'll need to be focussed on quality of the interface rather than anything else and quality is expensive to obtain both in terms of time and money.