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Leadership: Off Duty Gamers

BW Online Bureau Nov 08, 2014

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><root available-locales="en_US," default-locale="en_US"><static-content language-id="en_US"><![CDATA[Acharya Vineet was back after lunch to continue discussing India's knowledge tradition and ancient laws with the students at the B-school, TABS (see ‘<a href="http://businessworld.in/businessworld/businessworld/content/Lessons-Forgotten-War.html" target="_blank">Lessons Of A Forgotten War</a>', BW, 19 December). Acharya Vineet had the unique distinction of having studied at XLRI before he shifted gears to study Advaita. Pre-lunch, the class had examined an organisation where the line management had changed the appraisal ratings of their teams force, rating them through a bell curve. When the discussion veered to values that drove leadership, it led to the students asking what was that one resource for which ancient India was willing to work unconditionally, even if power or wealth could not be theirs. To that Acharya Vineet had said, "The satisfaction of knowing that one had done one's duty..." And now, post-lunch, student Vallabh asked on behalf of the class, "What is duty? And where did Parmeet's management fail?" Vineetji: Let us look at duty and its components. You have heard of the word ‘yagna'. A yagna is a collective effort to make an offering to the Gods, either to just give or to also get. So we can understand a yagna as a team of contributors who put into the activity fire their skills, knowledge, abilities and their integrity. There are different gods heading rain, wind, food, health etc., all of which together make up life. Sometimes one may propitiate a given department head, sometimes, the chairman himself. Student: Why would you propitiate them? Does that not mean ‘pleasing them'? Vineetji: It does. Pleasing here means, doing according to their command. So if the CFO has defined a budget, then the marketing team by adhering, please the CFO. Or, when marketing wants more budgets, it will appeal to the CFO, pray to him for more. If the CFO sees greater good of the organisation, he will grant. Coming back to duty. In any activity that is undertaken, there is a potential all-round gain. This has to be reaped, right? So let's say 50 people come together to till this ground and reap the potential gains. The outcome, says the Gita, is directly proportional to the sincerity of the inputs from participants to the activity. The Gita says when the participants act in an attitude of dedication, for greater good than their own, it creates the conditions necessary for the onward success of the activity. Flipside, if even a few people shortchange, the yagna will be impacted. Student: Sir, can we apply this just to Parmeet's organisation and validate, please? Vineetji: For that we must look at all aspects of duty. Because inputs to a yagna also include attitude towards other team players, towards the activity, attitude to peers, subordinates, service staff — everyone. The yagna respects every contributor, however small. But it has been seen that the human alone has the ability to not do, or do less than what the yagna requires. This is because only man has the ability to make choices. Animals, birds, plants do as they are programmed. But man will negotiate with rules. Often choices are between what I can get (greed) and what I can let you get (selfishness), and then I become the yagna, not the organisation! In some cases, man chooses neither, but ‘what organisation can get' (lokaagraha). But this path is chosen by the brave only. We know Parmeet's organisation did not fall in this box as top and line management were caught between greed and selfishness. For a yagna to bring forth its fruit, the ego has to be quietened.... And when this is done, conditions for perfect results are created. This is duty. We will bear in mind: duty is also enabling perfection through our inner attitude and integrity. This includes motivation and morale building. But acts done to feed and nurture oneself and not the yagna, result in suboptimal outcomes (aka, failure) resulting in dissatisfaction for those who get less than they gave (Parmeet), and sin for those who thus took away. This word sin is what we call adharma, or acts not in line with duty. Student: Vineetji, clearly then, what comes in the way of perfection is the ego that claims for itself and retracts from giving to the yagna! Amrita: Perfect! Look at the rain. It makes no choice. It falls according to the density of cloud formation. It rains because that is its dharma. Vineetji, this concept of organisation as a yagna... can you elaborate please? Vineetji: The whole organisation is a collection of teams, so every department is a yagna, every line manager is a purohit and marketing, sales, etc. are all yagnas in the total organisation yagna. These smaller yagnas become inputs to the total yagna whose success is dependent on each of these smaller yagnas. That means, every department and within it each team member has to perform his or her dharma. Amrita: So, is dharma equal to duty? Vineetji: English is an inadequate, imprecise language in the face of Sanskrit. Just as buddhi is not intellect, dharma is not just duty. To understand dharma, we look at the macro picture. There is a defined natural order, and all things and beings are subscribers of this order. In Sanskrit, it is called Rta. Likewise an organisation has its Rta to attain its goals and employees must do what is expected of them. Student: Who decides what is expected of you? And expectation from whose standpoint? Vineetji: From your standpoint, naturally. If you are in the right place and you are there consciously, actively, having chosen to be there, and you know why you are there, then there is a certain expectation that devolves upon you by virtue of your being in that spot, in that coordinate of time and space. That expectation is dharma. Therefore, where you are is a choice you make. Amrita: A little while ago you mentioned other aspects of dharma. Vineetji: That's right, there is varna dharma, stage-in-life dharma and svadharma. For example, are you studying for an MBA because you want to or because someone asked you to, whereas you wish to be a musician? Conviction to do your svadharma also comes with courage to deal with resistance and rejection — and that conviction comes when there is clarity... Student: What do you mean by clarity, acharyaji? I think we are all clear! Vineetji: Clarity is when there is only the eye of the fish; not the fish. Clarity is absence of clutter. That is where the scriptures play a role. The scriptural methods like pranayam, meditation and yoga are aimed at mental fitness and emotional integration. Such a mind delivers clarity. Clutter comes when there are too many things to choose from and the mind vacillates. Or you don't know what you want. Or, you want everything. Then you have clutter. You don't know what you want because you are unable to stay committed to one thing. This happens because you are distracted by a variety of must-haves, desires of the ego! break-page-break Consequently, the mind starts getting attracted more to the glory of a designation and its perquisites, less to the function or job content. The mind starts getting attracted more to what it can get than what it can contribute. Student: So the management at Parmeet's company lacked clarity? Clarity over what it needs to give versus what it wants to take home? Vineetji: They lacked the yagna spirit. Their egos and not wisdom governed their actions, so that greed and selfishness led them. Then the mind gets cluttered. Because the senses then are actively pursuing egocentric gains. This is the perennial battle of ego versus duty. Student: Why are you emphasising the ego such a lot? Ego is not bad... Vineetji: Ego is destructive, it takes away clarity. When you are part of a yagna, you are there to ensure the glory of the yagna. Not the glory of the ego. Ego impairs discrimination and urges you to take the path of pleasure, preyas, than good, shreyas. In management jargon, short-term gains versus long-term good. Duryodhan was a highly accomplished warrior, but short term in thinking. Desired quick satisfaction. Every battle he initiated was to appease the short term — his ego led need to take revenge, destroy... not build — right from the ‘wax house' episode up to the big war, the sigma of these gains actually netted total loss!  Yudhishthir, on the other hand, thought of shreyas, higher values, longer term and greater good. At every stage that he seemed to have lost, it was adding up to a long-term gain. We want a mind that can naturally choose shreyas. Student: If that were possible, wouldn't people have started using it? Vineetji: You will be surprised it's actually possible. Because the mind is as easy to train and control as it is to let it run amuck. But unfortunately, we train the mind to trod the path of clutter than that of clarity. Reflect upon this. Let us now examine... adharma, the antonym of dharma or anything that is not in accordance with the natural order. For example, just as the battle of Kurukshetra was about to begin, Arjuna declared he cannot fight, that he was renouncing everything. What we see here is this: here's a warrior by birth, responsible for society and the state, the best student of his batch, and now he wants to give it up to be what he is not wired for. Cowardice is a function of adharma! Student: How does that become cowardice? It's a choice he is making. He does not want to hold on to that job, he is umm... resigning? Vineetji: He is now also deviating from his stage-of-life dharma! Take a factory process. Every stage of production can take only certain inputs, and can deliver only certain stages of production. You cannot invoke Stage 7 when Stage 2 is going on. You get my drift? Likewise, the natural order defines stages of life in which an individual is expected to do only some things and not other things. This is stage-of-life dharma — where life is seen as a long process spanning, student stage, householder stage, senior citizen stage and renunciation stage. Each stage has a role to play and duties to perform. Amrita: How are you linking this to Parmeet's top management? Vineetji: Essentially, if there has been a breakdown of dharma at any stage in the life process without an effort to restore it, then it will translate into suboptimalities exponentially. Here, the top management is seeking short-term joy through budget gains via curving the rewards, unethically, repeat, unethically, which is a sign of desire for preyas. A leader —we saw in the morning — has a responsibility towards people who depend on him. Student: Call me dumb, but how is a management to know which path is shreyas? Vineetji: Unique, isn't it? Shreyas becomes a habit if you have been taught to choose the higher road since childhood. When you do that, then as a student you will follow student dharma, that is pure study, obedience of law and perfection of skills. Society also structured itself around these dharmas, so that those who had to protect had to protect and not teach or do business. In this manner, society took care of itself and its constituents. Students were left undisturbed to study as a part of building society's future talent pool, but if you instead choose to work, you would be damaging that effort! The grihastas looked after society and the elders in it. As a student, you were supposed to simply focus on gaining knowledge in academics, sports, music and martial arts, singlemindedly. Today students are distracted by things outside their stage-of-life. Like premarital sex, intoxicants… Anything that you do contrary to student life is adharma. Sex was allowed only to a grihasta. Not even to a vanaprastha! When these systems are contravened, we have a lack of clarity. These were designed so that we got the most out of studentship. That was why Arjuna was chided for seeking sanyas when his dharma was serving family and nation. If the top and line management had this kind of attention to developing a robust mind / intellect, clarity would have been theirs. If not, it will be like having a beautiful shiny car whose carburettor is filled with garbage. Students: So how did they breach dharma? Vineetji: The line manager's dharma was to appraise employees' performance in the context of his department, develop them and make them fit for delivering department dharma. That department is his yagnashala, his field of operation. Developing his team for excellence had to be his area of focus. How did that Parmeet get a shock? Isn't it because he did not know how the rules operated? Who's responsible for Parmeet's confusion? Student: Ah! Suppose it is not a professionally managed company and applied the appraisal tool without knowing how to, is that ignorance adharma? Vineetji: Haha… okay... it's like this. The nature of fire is to burn. It will burn regardless of whether you are a child, a sick person, an ignorant person or a fool. Once you occupy a position of leadership, teacherhood, parenthood, you assume responsibility for your actions and ignorance does not operate to cover your faults; no matter how small your team, you owe a duty to your team to provide right direction. break-page-break To work with our metaphor of yagna. You get appointed as purohit (leader of a yagna). It is a responsible position. Therefore, preparedness is paramount. The line manager's task is to appraise each employee and establish who has fallen short and also why. He needs to communicate to them that their contribution has lowered the team's accomplishments, because he takes responsibility for the suboptimal offerings of his department. Because of this, other departments get affected. He needs to communicate to the team this disparity and his job is to pull that quotient up to the right level for the next cycle. Then it will be correct to say that I am following my dharma and I am doing what is expected of me. But say I am tempted by personal gains or have an axe to grind and I misuse this moment, that would be  adharma. Student: How does anybody do his duty, in that case? This line manager, what can he do if his boss is saying this is the way I want you to conduct the appraisal? If I am being forced to do something wrong and I do it, is that dharma or adharma? Vineetji: See, at every stage you only need to audit against the need of the yagna. If while a yagna or effort is in process, one of the constituents, without having regard to the other players, steps aside to ensure his personal interest, that is thievery, adharma. Remember the fire principle. Fire will burn whether you touch it accidentally or deliberately. Never mind that you were ‘forced'; adharma is a choice you make, just as to be value-based is also a choice! If I am working towards greater good, then I am working for the benefit of my team. If my boss wants me to do something that is suboptimal, wrong, which I know will jeopardise the interest of my yagna, I must protest. <img src="/businessworld/system/files/case-study_200x200.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 10px;" width="200" height="200">But when I act to get more for myself, then I am working for myself. If that is so, then I am not working for the yagna. For example, Rama went to the forest for his father, for his people, as a commitment to obedience and to uphold the Kshatriya dharma, because his father's promise as king made to the queen, had to be fulfilled. And he, Rama, was germane to that promise. As the crown prince, he cared about Ayodhya's image. He believed that the prince should be respectful of dharma, only then the praja would too. Not just Rama, the whole kingdom believed in value-based living. And Rama had been taught his duties as a child. Student: But here even the MD is not doing his duty, as you say. Now is the company doomed? Who minds the MD? Because you also say the employees should not rebel or fight. Vineetji: The MD is hedged in by the board. Olden Indian kingdoms had sages attached to the king' family. The Rajguru, like a board, guided the king and his court in values. There is a grand example of King Ven, whose criminal conduct was destroying the kingdom, and the sages sat him down and talked sense into him, but to no avail. The sages then finally ousted the King and appointed a new leader. The net takeaway is this: every activity has a productive potential (profits). That has to be reaped. To do that we need to revere this potential, not desire it. When we revere it, we do for it what is due to be done (duty). Every creature has a role to play in the wheel of life, and if he is not given his due from the yagna, there will be unhappiness and suffering — for the one deprived and the one depriving. In short, just know your duty and do it. As Miyagi san would say, ‘I promise teach karate. I say, you do, no questions. That your part (duty)!'  Problem is, we don't assume our duties, our greed is far too huge! Student: So, if leaders and teachers must do their duty, how does Drona get away? When Ekalavya approached Drona and asked for his tutorship, why did Drona refuse? Wasn't it his duty to accept a student who came to him? Vineetji: Drona? Hmm... Drona-a-a-h! Very good. Drona exists in all of us. We are all Dronas! Why did Drona do that can be answered if we can answer why we fail in our duty! Classroom Discussion When the CEO does his duty, the people get their rights. When people do theirs, the nation gets its rights casestudymeera(at)gmail(dot)com (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 02-01-2012)