The Winning Way Quotes

“The moment you put a deadline on your dream, it becomes a goal.”
― Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

“What matters isn't how well you play when you're playing well. What mattersis how well you play when you're playing badly.'

- Martina Navratilova”
― Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

“And yet, winning is like a welcome drink going down your throat, like a beautiful embrace. It is brilliant while it lasts but it isn't forever. The high eventually melts away and the journey of life begins afresh. The truly remarkable among us visit these highs periodically; winning then becomes a journey, a graph where each point is crucial but is in reality merely part of a larger curve.”
― Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way: Learnings from sport for managers

“A talented individual without the right attitude can’t be a long-term sustainable winner. A person with great attitude but with limited talent could still be a great champion member of the team. A combination of these two will make the person a real winner.”
― Anita Bhogle, The Winning Way

“When the times are good, stretch them. But when the times are bad, stick to the basics and be honest with yourself.”
― Anita Bhogle, The Winning Way

“The world has come closer and yet people have grown apart.”
― Anita Bhogle, The Winning Way

“An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets. He must run with hope in his heart and dreams in his head.”
― Anita Bhogle, The Winning Way

“Success has to be repeatable because that is what makes you a champion. This implies knowing why you are winning.”
― Anita Bhogle, The Winning Way

“Winning Teams Execute Plans to Perfection Teams like these, that can dominate, are often excellent at converting their plans into action. They do the small things better than the opposition can, or wants to. It is incredible how many matches are won by teams that do the simple things, the one per cent things, better.”
― Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

“Success is in the Context of Time, Space and Scale Pyaasa was a haunting film but unlikely to appeal to a generation that doesn’t think too much of black-and-white photography, poetry and romantic losers. Bjorn Borg could never win Wimbledon with his old wooden Donnay racket in today’s era where over-sized rackets generate such tremendous speed and power. Batsmen who were told to ‘give the first hour to the bowlers’ in a Test match would discover there are only twenty minutes left thereafter in a T20 game. Alternately, sloggers who routinely clobber the ball over cow corner may not have managed too many against the four-pronged West Indies pace bowling attack. Eventually, it is about giving the consumers what they want and those requirements may have changed.”
― Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

“Organisations that are consistently successful have strong systems and a framework to enforce those systems. In the course of our corporate sessions we often ask people, and the larger teams they represent, what their one per cent things are and how much time they spend practicing working on them. Doing the one per cent things is a sign of humility, while on the other hand ignoring them would be a mark of arrogance. It is also a great indicator of work ethic, the one factor more than any other that contributes to winning consistently. I fear not the man who practiced 10,000 kicks once. I fear the man who practiced one kick 10,000 times. —Bruce Lee”
― Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

“A calm mind is not about doing nothing’, says Ajinkya Rahane. ‘It’s about keeping yourself busy, particularly if you are going through a tough phase. It prevents your mind from being flooded with negative thoughts.’14 Rahane found that ‘switching off’ after about fifteen minutes of introspection post a match made him more relaxed; very important for someone as intense and analytical as him.”
― Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

“Hallmarks of Winning Teams •Band of boys atmosphere, happy and relaxed. •Ability to pass the ball. •Living in the present, planning for the future. •Carrying everyone along—backing up under-performers. •A ‘can-do’ approach. •Being attentive to the one per cent things. •Common shared vision. •Strong personal goals yet subordinate to team goals. •Focussing on competition, not internal differences. •Non-negotiable work ethic. •Bringing in new people and ideas to prevent staleness. •Nurturing or culling at the right moment. •Hunger, passion, energy.”
― Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

“The moment you put a deadline on your dream, it becomes a goal. Sometimes a dream doesn’t remain as attractive as it did when it was first stored snugly in your head. You are accountable for your goals, but not for your dreams and maybe it is the fear of being accountable that keeps some things in the realm of dreamland.”
― Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

“One person who did that extraordinarily well all his life was Rahul Dravid, who combined work ethic with great ability. He believes it is always better to set challenging goals even if that means occasionally falling slightly short, rather than set simple goals which could lead to dissatisfaction and leave you wondering if they were too easy. Often people are inclined to set rather simple goals for themselves, and in the process they forget that the kind of goals one sets tells the world what kind of person you are. This is perhaps best highlighted in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets when Dumbledore tells the young Harry Potter, ‘It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.’ This applies to young students, sales executives, opening batsmen and leaders of giant corporations equally.”
― Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

“Set BHAG goals, some people are saying. Big Hairy Audacious Goals. The origin lies in the thought that we often don’t know how good we are and that sometimes it is good to embark on a journey into the unfamiliar.”
― Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

“Two cricketers who were excellent at this were the Australian captain, Steve Waugh, and the champion Indian leg spinner, Anil Kumble. Neither of them was possessed of the kind of glittering talent that a Brian Lara or a Shane Warne had, but Waugh and Kumble constantly raised the bar on their performance themselves. Waugh in fact called his book Out of My Comfort Zone and Kumble memorably said, ‘All his life Sachin Tendulkar had to live up to people’s expectations, I had to change them!’ Both set themselves very high personal performance goals and had no time for mediocrity, whether in their own cricket or anyone else’s. They proved that a combination of work ethic and challenging goals could lead you to achieve anything.”
― Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

“The best players break down their large goals into smaller ones that seem attainable. In doing so, they are never really chasing the large goal, only the smaller portion.”
― Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

“For the truth is that there is no shame in losing after having performed the best you can, provided of course you are honest enough to know that you did indeed deliver the best that you could. There is however much to feel small about if you haven’t tried hard enough. For to lose is not a crime, to offer less than 100 per cent is.”
― Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

“Steve Waugh in his excellent book on the World Cup campaign of 1999, No Regrets-A Captain’s Diary, writes that he told his team that it would be a ‘no regrets tour’; that irrespective of the result, his team would leave England with their heads held high. ‘Once in England, I introduced a new title—The No Regrets Tour—which reflected what I wanted from myself and all involved. Nothing left to luck, no “what ifs” or “if onlys”, simply a concerted, full-on team effort that would maximise our chances of victory.’ Not a single player, he said, would end the campaign believing they could have done more. The idea was that every player would deliver a 100 per cent every time he took the field or attended a training session or even, interestingly, a team meeting. So you didn’t land up for a team meeting merely to listen and think about dinner while someone else was talking. If the 100 per cent therefore was good enough to win the World Cup that was excellent but if it wasn’t good enough then so be it. The team would be proud of having done the best it could. It comes back to the truth that there is no shame in losing if you have done the best you can.”
― Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

“Those who went to B-School are all too familiar with the concept of ‘batch parity’ and that is a tough one to unlearn! Today it’s possible you might have to report to someone younger and on paper, less qualified than you. Those who have seen a fair bit of success find it particularly difficult to accept that what brought them success is not going to work anymore. Sandip Das believes it’s possible to stay relevant if you are curious and not worried about the age of the person teaching you!”
― Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

“When the booming cover drive or the elegant flick through mid-wicket isn’t really on, champions will scrape, nudging here and there for a run or just blocking for long periods. They are willing to play like royalty, even for a morsel of food. Everybody looks good when they are on top of their game but as Martina Navratilova once remarked, ‘What matters,’ she said, ‘isn’t how well you play when you’re playing well. What matters is how well you play when you’re playing badly.’ This is something we must all ask ourselves because when conditions are arrayed against us, we sometimes give up. We know of teams that left on assignments believing they had no chance and it came as no surprise that they lost.”
― Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

“So while talent is always acknowledged as a quality essential to winners, words like grit, perseverance and determination are used just as often. Indeed in the foreword to Steve Waugh’s autobiography Out of My Comfort Zone, Rahul Dravid wrote, ‘Waugh gave grit a good name!’ Apart from the fact that it’s a great line, it also provides valuable insight. Flair has always been considered glamorous, but grit has never been fashionable, and certainly not in India.”
― Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

“fact when the going is good everyone does well, but when the going is tough that’s when you separate the men from the boys, as with the cricketers who do wonderfully well on the subcontinent but fail on bouncy wickets, with the reverse being just as true. This is as true in the stock market as it is in sport. Warren Buffet said, ‘Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.’3 Of the hundreds of companies that sprung up during the internet boom, the solid IT companies survived and flourished despite the stock market crash (around the turn of the century), while several ‘get rich quick’ dotcoms bit the dust, their fancy ESOPs reduced to mere scraps of paper.”
― Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

“We often talk about the ‘third year’ in international sport being critical. When a newcomer comes along you don’t always know what he can do, or what bag of tricks he possesses. By the second year you have sorted him out and he now faces a situation, new to him, where he has to confront failure and find a way around it, ideally by developing new skills or by becoming more consistent. The better players succeed in year three while the flash-in-the-pan kind wither away, unable to come to terms with the heightened challenge.”
― Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

“Often, when the goal is daunting and the journey arduous, there is a sense of having achieved the goal, even if it’s really only a milestone. You see that with students who work so hard to make it to the IITs and IIMs and experience burnout once they get there. Sadly, they mistake a milestone for a goal and they feel that their destination has already arrived. It is true of young Indian cricketers who sometimes experience such joy and relief at being selected that they are not ready for what follows. Even companies are known to become complacent once they become market leaders. It’s easier for the number two and three to remain motivated since there is still an unfulfilled feeling and a higher sense of purpose. That is why managing success is always more difficult than achieving it and staying number one is more difficult than becoming number one.”
― Anita Bhogle and Harsha Bhogle, The Winning Way 2.0Learnings from Sport for Managers

“When companies start becoming completely goal-centric and forget that it is people who produce results, they struggle.”
― Anita Bhogle, The Winning Way

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit’.You”
― Anita Bhogle, The Winning Way

“organisations that do not reward those that set up goals will find there are no more goals to score!”
― Anita Bhogle, The Winning Way

“What you achieve is a function of what you think you can.’1”
― Anita Bhogle, The Winning Way