The most important battle for a student is when he stands face-to-face with a situation and does not really know if his actions will make him a strategist or a mere schemer. Winning is a very real objective to his mind and the route that he adopts is what will have the firmness of a real surface or the seeming firmness of the vacuum called a fiction!
‘How do I explain the subtle difference between a strategy and deviousness?’ I asked Specky. She immediately answered, ‘That’s easy. Look at what has happened in the Olympics this time and your job is done.’ She has a way with flinging facts at me that become clear only when I do a bit of sifting. So this is exactly what I did. The two examples that I found were from weightlifting and badminton.
Let me quote from the http://www.huffingtonpost.com website that reports how and why the South Korean and the Chinese badminton teams were disqualified from this year’s Olympics. It writes: “Eight female badminton doubles players were disqualified Wednesday from the London Olympics after trying to lose matches to receive a more favorable place in the tournament.” If these teams thought they were strategizing, they were terribly wrong. This is a clear case of schemers having being caught.
I also came across this interesting story of the Indian weightlifter who failed to get his medal because of a misplaced strategy. The website indiatoday.intoday.in reports: “Competing in the 69-kg category, Ravi totalled 303 kg in snatch, clean and jerk. He had a 136kg in snatch and then 167 in clean and jerk. The Indian had attempted 141 twice in snatch, but they were not legitimate efforts. In contrast, in snatch and jerk, after a 167, he went for 176 kg and couldn’t do it.” Ravi also remarked that it was his coach who insisted on his attempting 176 kg when later calculations showed that a lift of even 171 kg would have fetched us a medal. So here is an example of a wrong strategy.
The right strategy can lead you on to triumph. However, every strategy needs to be based on a sound summation of a person’s quantifiable skills. Obviously, strategies must evolve as the skills level evolves. The other end of a sound strategy has good results, successful interviews, satisfied customers, life-long relationships, and a clear conscience. Strategy helps not just worthy triumphs in sports but also in jobs, friendships, relationships, studies, exams, interviews and whatever else you can think of.
Scheming is like putting on leash a wolf from the wilderness and then allowing it to lead you the victory stand… it will, of course, take you some distance but then has a tendency to turn back and pounce upon you! You wouldn’t want that to happen.
So choose well. Choose strategy.
2012_The Real Fiction_Strategist vs Schemer_pub on 13 Aug 2012
Arvind Passey
17 August 2012
Article published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 13 August 2012
Written on 08 August 2012
Those of you who wish to send their comments to the newspaper, can go to the epaper to comment: http://theeducationpost.in/e-paper.aspx#
5 comments
Pavni Passey says:
Aug 17, 2012
Strategies are of course important, but these can only be implemented when we have certain schemes to follow. Both, ‘strategies’ and ‘schemes’ are complementary to each other. And thus, a question of choosing between the two becomes kind of irrelevant…if you opt one, you’ll automatically apply both.
Arvind Passey says:
Aug 17, 2012
Scheming here is akin to deviousness, cunning, foxiness, and something that may be associated with a negative trait. Strategy is positive. Even according to the laws of magnetism, strategy and scheming will repel each other.
Think about it.
khimi says:
Aug 17, 2012
There’s a very line between strategising and scheming. Appallingly, in this world, the two sometimes overlap without the knowledge of the doer. In such scenario it is important that we pay heed to our conscience and choose what is right and not what we think is right
Sampath says:
Aug 31, 2012
Awesome article very well written sir.You have a great art in writing article’s.I am now a fan of your writing by reading this article.
Arvind Passey says:
Sep 1, 2012
Thank you, Sampath…