Management Lessons from Srimad Bhagvat Geeta

The more I reflect, the more I get absorbed in how certain basic tenets do not change over time. Anyone who has read Partha Bose's book "Alexander the Great's Art of Strategy" would agree that corporate strategy and warfare have not changed since then. I will dwell on that some other time.

Continuing from the earlier issue, I want to explore Performance and Performance Management. This time I am picking shlokas from Chapter Two of the Srimad Bhagawat Geeta.

The Shlokas

"And if you do not engage in this righteous war, you will lose the dharma of your Self and glory, and be guilty of sin."

"And all will for ever speak of your disgrace, and such disgrace is worse than death itself for a man of honour."

On Duty and Self

All of us engage with our organization to perform a particular task, our dharma, in a righteous manner. What is righteous is driven by the values and beliefs of the organization. Without values and beliefs, what is right becomes subjective and gets trapped in interpretations of convenience.

If we do not perform our duty, we lose our self and become guilty of misdeed. We may tell ourselves we only did what we were instructed to do, but a simple soul search reveals the truth. One can lie to everyone but not to oneself. Abraham Lincoln put it well:

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."

On Reputation

People will long remember the errors and omissions we commit. We often forget the good someone has done, but we remember their misdeeds in granular detail. We remember the misdeeds of Indira Gandhi during the emergency far more than her contributions to the country.

One must act based on what people would write in their epitaph, not on what they might say behind one's back. When your life has ended, maybe after you have lived a long time, how would you like your friends to remember you? Write a dialogue between two of your friends. What do they say about you?

"Those who say that life is worth living at any cost have already written an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no person that they will not betray to stay alive." - Sidney Hook

On Striving

We must perform at levels where we can make true the wish expressed by Iqbal in his famous lines:

"Khudi ko kar buland itna ke har taqdeer se pehle, Khuda bande se ye poche bata teri raza kya hai."

In simple terms, one must build oneself so strong that God asks before deciding one's fate.

We must also be aware of the forces that would prevent us from reaching this kind of success. We remember the story of the frog that succeeded only because it was deaf enough not to hear the discouraging calls of its friends.

Identifying the Warriors

We must try to identify the others around us. Who are these other great warriors? They will either fight for your growth or against it. They could be a senior, a peer, or even a subordinate at your workplace.

"Even the great warriors who have a high regard for you will then scorn you for having turned your back upon the war out of fear."

Some warriors take pleasure in seeing your visible acts fail, even if those acts were not wrong, even if you acted out of ignorance. Some people find sadistic pleasure in your failure. They will stop you from taking the right path, partly out of their own ignorance and partly with intent. These are the ones who will be most critical of you when you fail. Beware of them. Do not let them turn you away from your path of success. Identify them as quickly as you can.

We will continue later to discuss how to work around these warriors and succeed without wasting energy trying to identify them.