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Commandments for CEOs

G. S. Balakrishnan

MY BRITISH boss, the director of a prestigious laboratory, was given to throwing parties and indulging in small talk. In one such tete-a-tete, tinged with typical British humour, he gave out a few commandments for top administrators. He made it clear tha t he was not arrogating to himself the role of an infallible oracle or Messiah. His precepts had been drawn from experience and were worth a try.

He began with a diatribe against perfectionist bosses and their pathological obsession with the very best which paralysed progress. After all, the best was the enemy of the good! While he commanded the pursuit of excellence, it should not be stretched to impossible lengths. When Nature's work itself was shoddy, how could we hope to achieve the unattainable? Dwarf trees, two-tailed calves and freak weather reflected badly on the creator. ``If broken arcs are our lot and not the perfect round, make the be st use of a bad bargain!''

In any complex set-up, decision-making was often the privilege of departmental or divisional heads. Rigorous screening -- more rigorous than in the choice of a bride -- should precede the selection of heads. ``Headless heads were always a menace.'' Excep tional integrity, commitment to work, level-headedness and an eye for the ridiculous were some of the qualities to be looked for in a leader. The ability to spell out was a must. A thirst for knowledge and information was sine qua non.

Nothing demoralised a head and reduced him to a faceless dud than inveterate backseat driving. No person, however eminent, could give his best if he was subject to persistent policing by a big brother. The freedom to experiment and err was the precursor to milestone achievements.

Participation and a sense of belonging should not be denied even to the junior employees. A stonecutter kept in the dark as to why he was cutting stone would do an inferior job than one who knew that he was contributing his mite to the making of a magnif icent cathedral.

``Be every inch a boss and not a babu'' was uttered by the Britisher with great vehemence, though babuism owed its origin to British rule with a battery of clerks. An unimaginative ``babu mentality'' of seeking light in a labyrinth of rules and regulatio ns and searching for precedents in old files should never be the administrator's cup of tea. Decisions should be taken and implemented with a bang, leaving the intricacies of red-tape to lesser souls. Less paperwork is always synonymous with sound admini stration.

Though there were many manuals on the ABC of time management, each man's time was his own to be expended discreetly. An extreme example of time-consciousness was that of Buckminister Fuller of ``Geodesic dome fame'' who wore three watches during air trav el to know the time in different geographical regions. It was gratifying that the concept of quality time over quantity time was gaining upon administrators.

Executives could achieve stress control by exercising less control! The best government was the one that seemed to govern the least. For the more imaginative, ``fiction therapy'' was recommended, particularly an anthology of Punch stories. The more enter prising might occasionally resort to a head-down position like Uriah Heap and view the world from an unusual angle, call it yoga or by any other name you choose!