The Hindu Business Line : One needs to go beyond job fits

OUR understanding of organisations is badly skewed, says Moid Siddiqui in Corporate Soul, from Response Books (www.indiasage.com). "The increasing complexity and the blinding pace at workplace puts people constantly on edge... Working in the pressure-cooker environment in the corporate world, especially in world-class companies, people feel badly stressed, suffocated and unhappy."

To help them, the author wanders through ancient wisdom to identify `the monk within the manager'.

Managing a business is like painting a big picture and not just clicking snapshots, writes Siddiqui, decrying the popular chase of tags and buzzwords that emerge like fads and quickly fade away.

"These tagged business practices and business processes stay in isolation like snapshots — and become evanescent moments in time." To the author, therefore, profit is the residue, not the sole aim.

The emerging era of business management will be one of ethics and spirituality, foresees the author.

"Purpose, vision, values, virtue, wisdom will be the new gods of worship. Creativity and innovation will become essential attributes for managers who wish to thrive in the chaos amidst uncertainties," he adds.

There will be a movement from `denominator management' to `numerator management', he predicts. `Cost effectiveness' and `downsizing' — the buzzwords of today — will fall by the wayside, Siddiqui visualises, quite ominously.

Another nugget of thought is that dynamic stability is a corporate paradox. "What the Bhagvad Gita calls `action in inaction' and the Sufi Kahlil Gibran terms as `going in staying' help explain `dynamic stability' with a spiritual touch and philosophical flavour."

Eric Abrahamson likens the idea to efforts for ending a war through negotiations rather than with an atomic bomb. "Dynamic stability has the great advantage of leaving survivors."

The author exhorts to learn from the six tenets of Taoism, viz. "don't force things on people; be unmovable — let events flow over you; maintain the universal balance — Yin and Yang; all things are one, interrelated; ideally, one should desire nothing — desires upset equilibrium; and the art of Wu Wei — action through inaction."

On the last, here's more: In Wu Wei, you don't go against the grain of things but wait for the right moment, advises Siddiqui. "All that you have to do is to remain alert and focussed on your purpose, and sooner or later the right opportunity will knock on your door, things will start falling into place."

The trick is to win without breathing hard, borrowing insight from Lao Tzu. "'Managing less is managing better' will be the mantra for the new age," declares the book.

A quote of I Ching cited in the book is the antidote that the author suggests for CEOs: "Danger arises when a man feels secure in his position. Destruction threatens when a man seeks to preserve his worldly estate. Confusion develops when a man has put everything in order.

"Therefore, the superior man does not forget danger in his security, nor ruin when he is well established, or confusion when his affairs are in order."

"Gone are the days when one used to see whether a person fits the job," can be a disturbing statement for many. Because, in the new age, one needs to go beyond job fits, argues Siddiqui.

"You need to look for righteousness in managers and find men of virtue who will not go astray. They are the only ones who can become the leaders of tomorrow. Character will play an important role tomorrow, far more important than competence."

Most important, "there is no right way to do a wrong thing".

Virtuous leadership ends when a leader forces his people to work for an unjust cause, says Siddiqui.

"The Qur'an compares such a leader with a man who catches hold of the tail of a camel that is falling into a well."

While a leader blinded by power can't see the difference between sycophancy and intellectual integrity, a good leader knows how to see through the opaque `human wall' that surrounds him, Siddiqui explains.

Such a leader can locate "the ones who are quietly engaged doing good things for the company without bothering to take a shine to the boss".

A stimulating read.

ManageMentor@TheHindu.co.in

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44 million words, 10 billion years of history, in 32 volumes