Author: Geetha Rao
Publication: The Times of India
Date: November 4, 2007
''The Mahabharata is not about good and evil
- instead, it teaches you that life is grey. Defining the grey is not easy
because it is deeply rooted to the context. So, negotiate the grey.''
Spiritual discourse by a seer? No, words of
wisdom for future global managers in an IIM-Bangalore classroom. What has
the Mahabharata got to do with IIMs? Lots. The great Indian epic can be used
to compare each of the Pandavas to managers of today with their roles, strengths,
weaknesses and consequences. The popular elective course - Spirituality for
Global Managers - has management students looking at Krishna as the CEO; Yudhishtir
who binds together values; Bhima (outcomes); Arjun (learning); Karna (legitimacy);
Nakul (process) and Shadev (purpose).
Says Ramnath Narayanaswamy, professor at IIM-B,
''The Ramayana and Mahabharata are outstanding texts for all times and can
be contemporised to any age. The Pandavas, Karna included, are each a great
hero with a fatal flaw.'' What is interesting is the way each of the Pandavas
has been made relevant in the management context. Explains Narayanaswamy,
''Yudhishtir is the mentor whose strengths are his values and beliefs. He
stands for propriety but is blinded by his code of honour. Similarly, Bhima
is an 'executor' manager. For him, the outcome is supremely important, the
bottomline matters - his weakness is he can be blinded by rage.''
Nakul, says the IIM-B professor, is the enabler
- the service hero of today. ''He's driven by process, but there's no active
leadership. Sahadeva is the visionary, but he is like the manager who stands
for thought and no action. Karna's strength is personal loyalty, but it also
brings about his doom. He's like the manager of today who'd buy vegetables
for his bosses,'' he says. Arjun stands for flawless perfection. His strength
is that he's assailed by doubt, but willing to learn. ''Today's young managers
are Arjuns, in search of their own heroism - they want to discover their own
meaning in life,'' he says.
But the best part is the course's attempt
to ''isolate the insides of religious traditions and contemporise them'' in
a managerial situation. ''Scholars from different religious traditions deliver
lectures. These include Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Sufism, Jainism,
Judaism and others, though the focus is not on scriptures. The focus is on
spirituality, not religion.''
Narayanaswamy says, ''There are three components
in management - the analytical (head), the emotional (heart) and the spiritual
(soul). But management education completely ignores emotional intelligence
(EI) and focuses only on analytical intelligence. However, our young future
managers need feeling and imagination. It's difficult to teach these as they
are experiencedriven. Life skills like creative thinking, listening, mentoring,
working under pressure, empathy, team building - all these come from EI.''
