When breaking the rules is not wrong...

Narada had the power to travel through space and time. One day, he decided to pay a visit to Ayodhya , the city of the rule-following Ram and to Vrindavan, the village of the rule-breaking Krishna. At Ayodhya, he told the story of Krishna; the residents did not appreciate the rakish, mischievous cowherd at all.

He is not serious at all, they said. At Vrindavan, he told the story of Ram; the residents did not appreciate the upright and rather serious king at all. He is no fun, they said. Narada then went to Hanuman, the mighty monkey, and asked him who he preferred : Ram or Krishna? And Hanuman said, "What is the difference? Both are Vishnu to me; Lakshmi follows him, whether he is Ram or Krishna."

So what is the difference between Ram and Krishna? Both belong to two different contexts: Ram lives in Treta yuga and Krishna in Dvapara yuga. One context demands Vishnu to be the upright rule-following Ram and the other context demands Vishnu to be the lovable rule-breaking Krishna. Both are same, but different. Both are upholding social order, dharma; one by keeping the rules and the other by breaking them!

In corporations, we seek people who comply and frown upon people who do not. But people love breaking rules. Often being in a senior position is an excuse to break rules. Being in the creative profession is seen as a chance to be undisciplined. But being Ram or Krishna is not about whether rules are upheld or broken; it is about the reason why rules are upheld or broken. Few pay attention to that.

Ankita is the chief operating officer of a large design studio. She has a staff of designers, colourists, architects and painters. It annoys her a great deal that they never come to office on time, never keep deadlines , never stick to timelines, and plan things only when compelled to. How can she run the company like this? The staff argued, they are all creative artists who cannot function with rigid rules. It hampers their innovative spirit.

One day, the following month, salaries did not reach people on time. Ankita took a vacation that day and was not reachable on phone. When she returned to office on the following Monday, after a long weekend, she saw an angry mob of employees demanding an explanation. "Surely, I have the right to be creative too and not keep deadlines and commitments," she said. The staff was not amused, but the message was passed loud and clear. It was a risk Ankita took and it paid off.

We all want to be Krishnas and want others to be like Ram, without really understanding what it means to be either. To be Ram or Krishna, we have to be Vishnu and to be Vishnu; we have to ensure there is social order that brings Lakshmi our way.

Marketing - The Ramayana Way!!!

In the Ramayana, the sage Vibhandaka raises his son Rishyashringa without knowledge of women. Rishyashringa lives a solitary life with no knowledge of gender. Then one day Shanta, daughter of the Lompada is sent to seduce him. She spend hours with him, first pretending to be a sage, then gradually introducing him to the idea of gender, and finally stirring sensual urges in him.

Eventually Rishyashringa succumbs. He becomes Shanta's husband and she brings him to the city of Lompada where he is welcomed with open arms. As a married sage, he is allowed to conduct yagnas. He conducts one yagna that brings rains to the drought-ridden kingdom of Lompada.

He is then sent to conduct another yagna that enables Lompada's brother, Dashratha, who is childless to become father of four sons, including Ram. The seduction of Rishyashringa is critical for rain to come in Lompada's kingdom and for Dashratha to have children. Rishyashringa represents the customer who has no desire for the product or service or idea we are selling.

To convert him, to seduce him, as Shanta does is a pre-requisite for business. Marketing is about seduction, making the customer of aware of needs he never knew he had. Unless the customer is compelled to share a portion of his wallet (marry Shanta), the business cannot grow (Lompada and Dashrath will not get rain or children).

We can question the morality and ethics of this action, but without seduction there can be no market where products, services and ideas are sold or bought. For generations, Indian kitchens did not have pressure cookers. When they first came into India, no one bought them. No one saw its value.

It cooked food faster and gave the cook more time. But people wondered what the cook would do with the extra time. Besides, experts were convinced the food did not taste as good. So then a marketing campaign was created, one that stated that a husband who loves his wife will buy her a pressure cooker and so make her life a little less stressful.

The seduction had begun. Wives saw pressure cookers as proof of love. The sale of pressure cookers rose phenomenally. Today, pressure cookers are seen as a necessity, hardly a luxury. Rishyashringa had been seduced. Desire is key to business. Without desire, there is no desire for things.

If there is no desire for things, the marketplace cannot exist. Marketing is about being bazaari (a word used with derision in traditional societies), and creating bazaars. Marketplace is where desire is satisfied.

Marketplace is about bhog and bhog is about seduction, where every seller is like Lompada, every product, service or idea is like Shanta and every customer is like Rishyashringa. The point of the market place is to make everyone happy, both buyer and seller. But to succeed, desire has to flourish.

In the times of need, should we tweak moral codes???

Let us start it with a fictitious story... Suppose a head of procurement for a large MNC is about to retire in a year. In his entire life, he has been an honest and upright man. With retirement facing him, suddenly he finds himself in an odd situation. With no regular income and most of his savings gone in taking care of his children, he doesn’t have enough money to take care of himself and his wife in our their age. But in a year, if he overlook some things and make minor adjustments in some large orders, he can make enough to live comfortably.

Even the company will not suffer because the quality loss or monetary loss will be negligible. But his conscience is needling him. Haven't even gods tweaked the moral code a little bit in times of extreme need?

He gets a feeling that you are asking for permission to be dishonest. Does the act become acceptable if someone agrees with you? Why do you need someone else's approval to be honest, or dishonest? Is it okay to be dishonest because the 'gods' were dishonest?

There is a folk story of Bhisma asking the people of Hastinapur for advice on whether he should fight for the Kauravas or the Pandavas. The people answered, "Why are you seeking permission now? Did you seek our permission when you took the decision to renounce your throne and stay celibate for the sake of your father?

We, the people of the city, are still paying the price of those foolhardy decisions. It is the one reason that has led to this war." You took a decision earlier in your career to focus all expenses on your children, and not on your old age. You are now facing the consequences of that decision. Good or bad, you have created this situation. This is what is called karma - the result of our actions that we are obliged to experience. Rather than taking responsibility, you are playing the victim.

Whether you are honest or dishonest, there is a price to pay. In the Mahabharata, Krishna upholds dharma and for that he is cursed by Gandhari, the mother of the Kauravas, which results in the destruction of his entire family. He does not plead innocent; he does not curse Gandhari for being unfair. Good actions have collateral damage, as do bad actions.

In Indian philosophy, no action is right or wrong, unlike commandment-based biblical traditions that have shaped principles of Modern Management. The organization expects you to be honest. But it also knows that you can be dishonest hence a whole system of CCTVs and auditors exist, to keep a check on wrongful activity. You can turn the other way, and rationalise your act, but there is the chance of you getting caught and with that will follow disgrace and loss of reputation. And even if you do not get caught, you have to live with the guilt and shame of upholding values only when it was convenient. The choice is entirely yours.

In taking the great vow, Bhisma gave his father happiness but doomed the city of Hastinapur to generations of palace squabbles. Is that good or bad? For years, writers and storytellers have told us Bhisma is a noble upright man. Was he really so? There is no objective truth. Only opinions. Ultimately, you have to decide and face up to the consequences. That is what Indian mythology talks about.

What is being fair??? The ethical dilemma

We all know that in the Mahabharata, Bhisma abducts three princesses of Kashi, and makes them marry Vichitravirya, his half-brother, who is not as strong. Bhisma uses strength to claim mates, just as animals do. But he does this for his weaker brother, an act of generosity that only humans can do. Is Bhisma being fair? Without Bhisma's support, his brother cannot secure a wife. The women on their own would choose a worthier groom, maybe even Bhisma. Is that fair? What about Vichitravirya's needs? Is it his right to get a bride?

Is it Bhisma's responsibility, as elder brother, to secure him one? What about the rights of the bride? If the women chose Bhisma, would he be obliged to be their husband? What about his vow of celibacy? Don't his wishes matter? These questions make up what is called a dharmasankat in Hindu mythology, an ethical or moral dilemma.

When a guy (let’s call him XYZ) took over as a director of a company, he observed that the company mostly hired men, that too from a particular community. There was hardly any representation from other communities. He felt the company was being very unfair, unethical and even immoral. He raised this in a meeting and this led to many unhappy murmurs.

Did the company exist to make profits for shareholders or solve social issues of inequality and discrimination? When XYZ argued passionately, the other directors told him the company owed its success greatly to its recruitment policy, which was never put down in writing but implicitly accepted across rank and file.

If XYZ has his way, will the company be fairer? Will it continue to be profitable? Who was willing to take the risk? Culture, or Sanskriti, is a man-made construct. Notions of right and wrong are artificial, not natural.

In the jungle, there is no notion of fairness or unfairness. Animals struggle to survive. In the quest to survive, the predator kills prey and prey seeks to outrun the predator. No animal is good or bad. Ideas of good and bad, right and wrong, exist only amongst humans. We are greedy, unlike animals, who stop eating once their stomachs are full.

Thus, humans have the capacity to be worse than animals (greedy) and better than animals (generous). Is generosity being right? If that is so, then culture cannot exist, for culture is based on destruction of nature. The question is not whether we are greedy or not, or whether we are generous or not. The question is how greedy we are willing to be and how generous are we willing to be.

Now that the company is successful, the directors may decide to the stay the same -a boy's club limited to a community. Or they can change into a new organisation that is more accepting of others, at the very least women and disabled people from the same community and then, heart and wallet willing, recruit people from outside. This journey of the head and heart is as much part of organisational development, as development of talent and skills.

Apple's Success in terms of Mythology

 I really admire Apple as a company, for the late Steve Jobs' leadership, the great product portfolio that they have, the marvelous brand recall, and cult following that they have managed to build over the years. Everybody knows what they are doing still nobody is able to build another iPad or another Mac. Is there a parallel in mythology and can Apple's success be decoded in mythological terms?

ihave always loved the Apple logo, a bitten apple, no doubt alluding to the Forbidden Fruit eaten by Eve and Adam, symbol of the Original Sin, the act of transgression that led to humanity being cast out of Eden.

From what I have read and heard of Steve Jobs, he loved to transgress, break boundaries, and challenge the gods, with his innovation. He is the classic Greek hero, like Achilles of Iliad and Odysseus of Odyssey, whose win the admiration of their peers, and their envy, by their extraordinary feats. And like Greek heroes, he too was struck by hubris, excessive pride, with cancer and the realization of his own mortality becoming his nemesis.

Steve Jobs changed the world forever. His designs reveal a very astute understanding of human nature.

He allegedly said that the 'customer does not know what he wants'. That is so right. There are so many wants and needs buried in our subconscious that we are not even aware of. Like Prometheus, Titan of foresight, he anticipated human need before humans. Contrary to popular opinion, he knew that too many choices confuse and confound and so in his shop choices were kept to a minimum.

He decided what was best for the customer and the customer agreed. Most importantly, he realized that humans are lazy. Like a magician we want a wand that when waved changed the world and so he created a computer without a keypad and a keypad without keys. In nature, inside the womb, the first sense to develop is the sense of touch. This is the primary source of pleasure. He exploited it when he innovated with the touch pad screens. Every time you feel joy when you run your hand across a screen and find it transform at will, know how deep Steve Jobs' understanding was of human psychology and physiology.

Apple changed the world forever. But did Apple change Steve Jobs? I do not think so. When you see the launch of the Mac and then the launch of the iPad you actually see the same man, older but essentially the same, arrogant and self-assured in his brilliance, though a tight turtleneck has now replaced the bow tie.

Here is a man who could not handle India, spiritual leanings and vegetarian habits notwithstanding. The chaos was too much to take. Here was a man who loved to control everything, simplify designs, and keep everything close to his chest. He hated sharing ideas and letting his products talk to other products. He frowned upon mediocrity and found it too hard to be generous. India where you have to 'adjust' in order to survive would have been impossible to handle.

And India would have told him, that no matter how hard you try, the world will move on. One day Steve Jobs' and Apple will be forgotten just as we have forgotten who the first man, or woman, who invented the wheel and the first man, or woman, who domesticated fire. It is the nature of man to believe that his lifetime is the span of the cosmos. It is the nature of man to believe his contribution will solve all the problems of the world. Sadly it isn't so.

Two Sides of a Coin - 'The Bad' and 'The Greater Bad'

We all know that the battle of Kurukshetra was fought between Kauravas and Pandavas for 18 days. The first nine days of this battle were indecisive. For the Pandavas it was very critical that Bhishma, the commander of Kaurvas, be killed.

On the 10^th day of the battle, Pandavas killed Bhishma by using Shikhandi (a eunuch) as a human shield for Arjuna. Bhishma saw Shikhandi was a female and he has vowed not to raise his weapon for a female, whereas Pandavas saw him as a male. Bhishma’s own interpretation of the situation got him killed. Had he interpreted Shikhandi as a male, he would never be killed.

Now, the new commander of Kauravas, Dhrona broke Pandava morale by killing Arjun’s son Abhimanyu and even making his soldiers fight at night, against the rule of war.

To kill Dhrona, Pandavas lied that his son was killed. Drona was extremely attached with his son. This broke his morale and he lowered his weapons. Taking advantage of this, the leader of the Pandava army raised his sword and beheaded Drona.

Barbareek is a little known character whose tale is told in many folk Mahabharatas. He was stronger than all five Pandavas put together. Not wanting him to join the Kauravas, Krishna asked him for a boon and said, “Give me your head.” Barbareek immediately severed his neck and offered his head to Krishna with one request that he be allowed to see this great battle from a vantage point. At the end of the war, the Pandavas asked him who the greatest warrior in the battlefield was. Barbareek replied, “I saw no great warrior on the battlefield. All I saw was Krishna’s discuss whirring around cutting the heads of warriors and their blood washing the hair of Draupadi, who had long ago been publicly disrobed by the very same warriors.”

It is a good idea, in the middle of corporate political wrangling, to step back and see who is provoking the fight and stoking the flames. Often the two parties involved fail to realize that out there is another man making them fight for his very own agenda. So ask yourself – are you fighting your own battle in Kurukshetra or are you a pawn in someone else’s much bigger game?