Corporate Mahabharat

Great Epic Mahabharata offers lessons in excellence on life's battlefield.

Do Corporate go through Mahabharata? 

Yes. 

And interestingly the biggest battle of a corporate is not outside of the organization, albeit it's in the inside of the organization.

Mirror Mirror? Who amongst of Mktg / HR / IT / SCM / F&A / Sales is Imp of them all?

This question is celebrating 104 mn weeks jubilee on human thought screen.

Just that this dispute was called the varna systems as per Vedic traditions or the city-state-soldier analogy as per Aristotle.

Circa Corporate Age.

HR says they are important because its all about people.

Marketing says they are important because its all about perception.

F&A says they are important because its all about the money.

SCM says they are important because its all about the matter...its optimized movement.

Operations says they are important because its all about true karma (actual labor).

CRM says they are important because its all about the guest/atithi called consumer.

...this list is enlistless.

Seems that these functions (staff functions/line functions) are metaphorically like religion.

They have their own scriptures...versions of truth.

And different gurus of these disciplines come out with different scripture every now and now.

People profess them religiously.

But it breeds distance amongst different departments (both intra and inter).

"Intra" because different people in the same department are at different consciousness/interpretations levels of the doctrine. "Inter" because each department feels they are competing for attention and resource while claiming the organization's success.

So what could leadership do to help employees pursue dharma? In fact, it is the duty of the leadership to provide an environment for employees and other stakeholders to understand and fulfil their dharma.

First up, is there any merit in the question of any one being more important than the other?

Bhagavad Gita has an interesting quote where it mentions that vidya vinaya sampanne, one whose quest is for true knowledge and pursues it with humility, looks at everybody with samadarshina (equanimity...same-ness).

However owing to different roles, we need to impart different valence to different people and departments. 

While authority and rewards need to be distributed, the underlying virtues (compassion, friendliness & joy) need to be the same for all.

Second up, how to distribute authority and rewards?

Depending on the consciousness of the employees, and their response to love and discipline , each organization needs to develop its own unique framework... It's own balanced scorecard.

But the beginning could be provided by one of the eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga...

...the Yama ...

a) Satya: Truth Telling...employees across organizations have so much to say but they dont know how, when and if there are consequences. Most organizations would improve collaboration, creativity and productivity only by encouraging truth telling. Again, some leaders fear that truth telling may spiral into chaos. However, if truth telling is backed by wisdom discussions over a period of time, employees will realize the deeper meaning of their belief system and the fragility of reasons to back what they casually refer to as"truth".

b) Asteya: Non-Stealing...we often hear stories of organizational nepotism or wrongly claiming credit for work done. Organizations need to have a proper mechanism to address concerns-inquiry-resolution in asteya. Through deeper and consistent discussions, when companies help employees discover their inner self and it's relevance to the organization, the employees will stop short-cuts because they will know their own importance and the importance of others.

c) Brahmacharya: Loyalty: People are jumping brands, relationships, companies etc at a real fast rate. Unless organization displays earnestness in exploring meaning-purpose and then living it, its moral stand for expecting people's loyalty is under fire. 

d) Ahimsa: Non-Violence: Words-Language-Opinion-Judgement are weapons. Using them carefully will relieve people of lot of suffering. If one can't win people's heart, then use of smartness is a weakness. Organizations need to institute discussions-tools to make conversations for conversions and not diversions.

e) Aparigraha: Non-Hoarding: In the recent World Economic Forum's "Re-Emerging Market" debate, all the six panelists from Russia-China-Japan-Egypt-CNBC unilaterally blamed the income inequality, in developed economies and now in emerging economies, to be the prime-most aversion-motivation from hard-sincere labor and great approach-motivation towards unethical or sloppy performance. Duty of the leader is to bridge income divide amongst employees and not hoard as compensation for self and peers.

When leaders learn and realize the systems theory of life and its happenings, human no longer will be a statistic for them. These discussions-expressions of "yama" from Ashtanga or organizational disciplines shall help mould customized answers for org.

Happy Mahabharat. Satyamev Jayate.