Management by Mantra

by Vikas Kumar
The Economic Times
June 1, 2007

(Original article requires login at http://epaper.timesofindia.com)

Through all the ups and downs in his career, Sanjay Lalbhai has held been guided by the philosophy of nishkam karma. When his company was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy seven years ago, the managing director of Arvind Mills could possibly have reached for Robert Andree's Art Of Negotiation or any of the many other management books lining his office shelves. He was, after all, trying to persuade 23 international banks to restructure over Rs 2,000 crore of debt the company had raised for its new textiles complex in Ahmedabad . But in his time of crisis, Lalbhai chose to reach for an old book he'd read in his youth — the Bhagavad Gita. "I was in an impossible situation and at that point, the ideas of nishkam karma really helped me fight the stress and find peace," he says. "Good and bad fortune are a matter of time, the Gita tells us, and you need to stay driven while detaching yourself from the outcome. It's a philosophy that has guided my work."

Every year, around Diwali , the entire batch of MBA students from Mumbai's SP Jain Institute of Management visits Kayavarohan, an ashram on the outskirts of Vadodara in Gujarat . There they spend two days listening to Swami Viditatmanandji, a Harvard educated former chemical engineer from the US, who gives them lessons from the Bhagavad Gita. Aptly called the 'Gita Shibir', the programme explains the relevance of lessons contained in the Gita to their personal and professional lives. Started 10 years ago, the programme is optional, but everyone attends. "Many of the students felt it's one of the best experiences we can get," says Manesh Shrikant, dean of SPJIMR, who teaches a course on lessons from the Gita as applied to management. This year onwards, the institute is planning to start a course on ethics based on the Gita.

As Indian business booms, academicians, consultants and CEOs are increasingly turning to ancient texts like the Bhagavad Gita and the Vedas, for inspiration. It's Western management coffee with a dash of Eastern philosophy masala, and it makes for a heady brew. Says management consultant Mrityunjay Athreya, who has been making linkages between ancient texts and modern management for many years now, "Vedantic texts collectively stress several principles of great relevance to contemporary management. As societies and organisations in the west have become more professional, democratised, collegial and knowledge-based, some of them have realised the great relevance, practicality and sustainability of these principles."

What also works in favour of old-world wisdom is that it's told through stories and experiences, which helps get the message across engagingly and effectively. "The best lessons are learnt through stories. That's what's leading to this genre," says R Gopalakrishnan, executive director, Tata Sons, who's recently written a book on management lessons from nature titled, The Case of The Bonsai Manager.
The universality of old texts comes from the fact that they are not restricted to religion, but speak of a way of life. Lalbhai, for example, is a part of the Ram Chandra Mission, which is a lifestyle as much as it is a philosophy."The sahaj marg system taught by our guru requires 45 minutes of daily meditation, where you wish away all the impressions gathered through the day, and interact with the world afresh. I've always been spiritually inclined and the sahaj marg has worked very well for me," he says.

Though management theories are not exactly been abandoned by Indian CEOs, they sometimes may have their limitations. They were modelled on practices that worked in other cultural contexts, which makes it tougher to replicate them successfully across the world. Ramnath Narayanswamy, professor of economics and social science at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore, who teaches a course on spirituality at the workplace, explains: "Management as a discipline quite literally originated in North America against the historical backdrop of Fordism and Taylorism. While its reach is indeed universal, its origins are very North American and in some respects, the discipline is still a prisoner of its historical orientation. The excessive emphasis on analytical intelligence as opposed to emotional and spiritual intelligence is a case in point. The overwhelming predominance of "reason" and "science" when in fact it's our daily experience that all life is based on faith and sacrifice, is another. Or the importance accorded to tools and techniques in MBA education at the expense of neglecting character, values and attitude might be yet another."

There is a realisation that management theory has to be home grown and not just transplanted from the West. Satish Pradhan, executive VP- group HR, Tata Sons, says, "Western thinking has been dedicated to frameworks and metaphors, and the poverty of these frameworks is revealing itself — it's not intellectually robust." In constrast, says Pradhan, thinking in this part of the world isn't linear, so one cannot simply take ideas and replicate them. By the same token, this makes it difficult for Eastern concepts to be understood or grasped fully by Westerners. "It's much like how the Americans wondered, 'The Japanese are hiding something' when they visited factory shopfloors of Japanese companies to learn the secrets of their success in managing costs and quality in the early '80s." That's because much of the philosophy of management there is unarticulated yet ingrained in the cultural psyche of the people.

As corporate governance and ethics take centrestage in business worldwide, management theory is suddenly not enough to run businesses. Deepak Ghaisas, CEO, iflex India, says corporate governance can't be addressed through legal enforcement alone. "But in the US, Clause 49 and Sarbanes-Oxley are doing just that," he says. "Laws are meant to tell people what not to do. But for the first time the law is trying to tell us what to do. That has been the job of religion." Ghaisas, who also regularly teaches at various management institutes, explains how the principles of the Vedas can be applied to different levels in the business organisation: Rajayoga is suitable for CEOs who want to lead effectively, Gyanayoga is for middle management who should acquire knowledge to move to the next level, Karmayoga is about execution and is apt for junior managers, while Bhaktiyoga or dedication is what the blue collar worker is expected to demonstrate at work.

Ironically, the West has taken a lead in applying learnings from the Gita to business. And several books are being published on the subject. Nepalese author Pujan Roka, who lives in America, has penned a book with a title that says it all: Bhagavad Gita on Effective Leadership. He says, "The core leadership message of the Gita is to lead by ideas, actions, and compassion. Many contemporary leadership theories and practices are similar to what was written in the Gita thousands of years ago. You will find popular leadership concepts, such as emotional intelligence, servant leadership, learning organisations, compassion, and many others, discussed in the Gita. These concepts are discussed in a spiritual framework, as management science – as we understand today – did not exist then. The wisdom of the Gita attests that the subject of leadership was profound in the ancient times and its principles are still applicable to business and organisations today."

It quite often happens that the business world returns to the more basic, existential questions in times of trouble. Business author Gita Piramal believes this is a cyclical phenomenon. "It's the fallout of society's attitude to big business," she says.
Meanwhile, the business schools have climbed on board with courses based on spirituality, taught by faculty with a spiritual bent of mind. At SP Jain Institute of Management, Manesh Shrikant believes that the concepts being taught so far are not designed for working in the future. They need to take the interdependencies between business and its stakeholders into account. Shrikant says there are two ways of living a life — as a consumer or as a contributor. The former is how companies today operate, with a relentless focus on the bottomline. But they need to start thinking like the latter: "The contributor approach recognises that I will be wealthy but I must also think of others." He goes on to add: "Eastern thinking was always about duties while Western thinking is about rights. They are two sides of the same coin. You compete to excel, but collaborate to increase the size of the pie."

Piramal is of the view that there is much more to India than spiritual thinking — there are plenty of business innovations happening in India that have not been tapped yet. "We are the world's largest laboratory for new management thinking," says Piramal. She suggests that corporates adopt world-class thinking tempered with the unique qualities that make them Indian.

"We have not been giving legitimacy and respect to our own body of knowledge. But that's beginning to happen," says Pradhan. He suggests that Indian thought leaders must articulate these theories in a manner that's "palpable but not tactile". It could well mean less rigid and less defined frameworks, and more unanswered questions: "Linearity doesn't work...it's got to be a bit more fuzzy; it's got to be integrative and adaptive, and never prescriptive," says Pradhan. "It will seem like what the Japanese were supposedly trying to hide."

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