JUST imagine you are on your way to a concert and at an intersection, you encounter a group of people all staring at the sky. Without even thinking about it, you start peering upwards too.
Why? Social proof!
In the middle of the concert when the soloist is displaying absolute mastery, someone in the crowd out of the blue begins to clap hands and suddenly the whole room joins in. You do too. Why? Social proof.
After the concert you go to the coat check to pick up your coat and watch how people in front of you place a coin on a plate even though, officially, the service is included in the ticket price. What do you do? You probably leave a tip as well.
Social proof sometimes roughly termed the bend dictates that individuals feel they are behaving correctly when they act the same as other people. In other words, the more people follow a certain idea, the better (truer) we deem the idea to be and the more people display a certain behaviour the more appropriate this behaviour is judged to be by others. This is of course absurd.
Social proof is the evil that creates inappropriate management techniques and possesses the danger of paralyzing logical thinking as peer pressure can easily warp common sense. Yours truly has deliberately chosen the above opening remarks to analyze the shoddy fashion in which the Namibian Premier League (NPL) is conducting its core business.
Point of departure is the fragile format in which the league’s opening tournament, the NPL League Cup will be administered. Those in charge of administration of the NPL have for some strange reason decided to have two sets of rules in the same tournament that are likely to benefit a few teams at the expense of fellow participants, so to speak.
Football leaders and administrators in the Land of the Brave have developed a nasty habit of the know-it-all-attitude and will not listen nor accept advice whenever they are found with their pants down.
The bottom line is that you can’t have two different rules in the same competition but everything is possible in our neck of the woods. Our self-proclaimed football gurus will always come up with worn-out phrases such as “It’s a global or regional practice so what is wrong with us following suit.”
Just because things are done upside down in sister countries does not really mean we are entitled to commit schoolboy errors in terms of disregarding the basics governing the game of football by advancing skewed and arrogant excuses to cover up for their countless errors of judgment. This ugly trend sends out worrisome signals and clearly demonstrates that some of these blokes are operating outside their area of competence.
It should be remembered that some of the rules and regulations are not iron cast and can be amended and twisted a bit to suit our own conditions and environmental factors. We need to reflect on what went wrong in the past and try to correct our mistakes rather than always try to defend ourselves. Yours truly almost fainted when I learnt that the country’s topflight league is offering a laughable amount of N$50 000 for the winning team in a tournament that will be played over a period of three weeks.
Well! My learned friends at the NPL argued that this particular tourney is just serving as a pre-season exercise to keep the teams afresh but alas, N$50 000 is peanuts and should not be associated with a much sought-after product such as football, or is this how we value our most valuable product?
Logic suggests teams can rather choose a much easier route by competing in one of the popular unofficial knockout tournaments in nearby towns Dordabis or Leonardville for that matter where they stand a good chance to walk away with N$30 000 after a weekend workout instead of playing in a marathon tournament for a paltry 50 grand. I rest my case.
By Carlos Kambaekwa