Last on First Off

Mahe Drysdale won the third race against Rob Waddell this morning to take the series 2-1 . Many around New Zealand will believe that justice has been done and that Mahe should have been going to the Olympics anyway. Why is this? Is it our innate sense that privileges and rewards should be earned and that somehow Rob Waddell hasn’t earned the right to race for New Zealand?

After all he chose to go and race for Team New Zealand and made his money in that arena. How can he expect to just reappear on the scene and be chosen to go to the Olympics over someone like Mahe who has devoted years to practice and training in preparation.

I find it funny that we impose this belief on others but are unwilling to apply it to our own situations. We all get upset when someone who is naturally talented but hasn’t done the ‘hard yards’ as Murray Deaker would say, comes along and is promoted over the guy who has…but if the shoe is on the other foot and we are the talented one we somehow expect that it is our right to be given the position.

Jesse Ryder proved that he really thought he deserved to be in the NZ cricket team - in fact he thought he was the New Zealand cricket team! - there is no doubt he is talented but can you really expect to have your place if you don’t have the rest of the goods – like character, patience, perseverance just to name a few.

We practice or at least used to practice an unspoken rule in business which said last on first off but does that really apply? If the last on is more talented than the middle-aged employee who has been with the firm for 20 years do we get rid of them instead?

Long-term employees are something from the past these days – apparently we change career as many as seven times during our life – there’s no time for faithfulness to the firm. But on the other hand should there be if there is no faithfulness from the firm?

So do we really deserve what we have? Should we really have that expectation anyway? We can’t say everything will be okay in the long-run because we have made short work of reducing that to the shortest period of time we can so that we can pursue what we ‘deserve’ as quickly and with as little effort as possible.

Score update NZ 130/3 - no one except How prepared to stick around, to bat for ‘long’ periods. Typical!