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Bhagavad Gita: Ideas for Modern Management

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Author: Prof. B Mahadevan, Dean (Administration), Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.

This is based on a talk delivered by Prof. Mahadevan in a seminar on “Towards a New Paradigm ofBusiness management – Alternative Perspectives from Ancient Indian Wisdom”, held at IIM Bangalore onDecember 12, 2009.

Introduction

Bhagavad Gita is one of the most popular of the ancient texts not only among the Indians but also amongthe westerners. In f act Robert Oppenheimer who successf ully exploded the f irst atom bomb on July 16,1945, at Alamogordo, New Mexico was greatly attracted by Gita. Watching this event f rom a distance, hewas supposedly uttering a phrase f rom Bhagavad Gita[2]. Bhagavad Gita has inspired many of our nationalleaders and provided them strength, moral courage and clarity of thought with which they have led thecountry in its struggle. Arguably, these are important elements of making a good manager or a leader today.Herein lies the motivation f or this article. But what is really interesting is that these ideas are available notonly in the Bhagavad Gita but also in the ten Upanishads and f or that matter in several ancient Indian texts.

Bef ore we look at one or two interesting aspects of management f rom Gita, it is important f or us toappreciate the multi- f aceted nature of ancient Indian texts. We need to get this aspect abundantly clear sothat the real value of the ancient Indian texts is f ully understood. Further it also inf orms us that only if weapproach the ancient Indian texts with such a perspective we will be able to gainf ully understand itsusef ulness to solve today’s problems.

Ancient Indian texts – Multi-faceted perspectives

First of all we must understand that the Ancient Indian texts could be read with dif f erent purposes. Forexample, a true bhakta of Lord Krishna may want to read Gita as it is a matter of religion to him. He may doa daily paraayana of some of the verses. Many of us can identif y with this role. On the other hand, astudent of philosophy or a person with a deep desire to search the inner truth or meaning of “self ” or aspiritual seeker may view Gita as a spiritual text. Again some of us may f it into this role. But there is a thirdaspect to Gita and other such texts, which many of us are not aware of . Many of us perhaps did not alsothink of such a possibility. This is what I call as “secular” or a “material” perspective. By that we mean a setof ideas that help us conduct our lif e sensibly more f rom a day to day, working perspective. This is ref erredto as secular because in this perspective there is no need to bring in the notion of religion or spirituality.

Theref ore all these ancient texts provide three distinctive perspectives. It all depends on how we want toread it. Let me look at one or two examples f rom Gita to understand this point clearly.

Is Gita a Religious text or a Secular text?

Let us look at a pair of f amous shlokas – f amous because it was a tit le song f or the Mahabharata serial.

यदा यदा िह धम य लािनभवित भारत । अ यु थानमधम य तदा मान ंसृजा यहम् ॥ 4.7 ॥

प र ाणाय साधूनां िवनाशाय च दु कृताम् । धमसं थापनाथाय संभवािम यगेु यगेु ॥ 4.8. ॥

For the f irst t ime in Bhagavad Gita Krishna manif ests himself as God through these two shlokas. In the f irstthree chapters he has been engaging in conversation with Arjuna more f rom a level of a “cousin”. That iswhat we implicit ly inf er f rom a reading of the Gita. Quintessentially this is the “Avathaara Purusha”dimension brought through this shloka. At a f irst reading one can easily detect the religious angle.

Whenever there is a deterioration of dharma the God takes one more incarnation (Avathaara) to uphold thedharma. The incarnation of God, as the next shloka suggests, is to protect the good people, destroy the evilones and restore Dharma in the society once again. That is how the cardinal principle of incarnation manifestshere in terms of the context, motivation and purpose.

This is one way of looking at it. However, the same set of shlokas could be understood as a prof oundmanagement concept because that is what you will f ind in the instructions of many engineering andmanagement schools. Let us understand this perspective with respect to these shlokas.

Stability and long term sustainability of the system happens because there are regenerative points. Whenthe system attains disequilibrium and shows signs of being unstable and going out of control measures have tobe taken to restore the equilibrium in the system. This is a classical systems engineering idea according towhich there are regenerative points in the system. If the regenerative points are not there, the system will gounstable.

One can easily relate this to well-known concepts in Economics & Management. The demand – supplyequilibrium, pricing decisions in alternative market structures, the way in which organizations continue toroot out bad CEOs or Managers over t ime, the mechanisms to prevent opportunistic behaviours in the longrun (and variations of this such as Prisoner ’s Dilemma) could all be explained by this basic axiom laid out inthis shloka.

Is Gita a Spiritual text or a Secular text?

Let us look at one more example. In chapter 2 of Gita, when Lord Krishna begins his set of arguments toconvince Arjuna the need to f ight against the Kaurava army, the f irst idea he brings into f ocus is the notionof t ime. What strikes you is that this idea is in stark contrast to modern day pre-occupations with quarter-to-quarter guidance ritual that investment bankers are going af ter. However that is not the point of ourdiscussion now. Let us look at one of the shlokas f rom this argument of t ime and its impact.

वासां स जीणािन यथा िवहाय नवािन गृ ाित नरोऽपरािण ।

तथा शरीरािण िवहाय जीणा अ यािन संयाित नवािन दहेी ॥ 2.22. ॥

The easy and direct meaning to this shloka runs as f ollows:

Just as a person discards an old and a torn shirt and wears a new one, the soul (Atma) also discards an oldbody and acquires a new one. What a simple way to explain a complex idea of a chain of birth and deathevents! There is a spiritual angle to it. It is a profound spiritual thought here and true seekers of knowledge willrevel on this idea and deeply contemplate.

Now we shall look at an alternative perspective of this shloka.

In order to be successful and sustainable organizations need to continuously engage themselves in discardingold ideas (mind set!) & embrace new ones. This is the fundamental building block of innovation and creatingcompetitive advantage.

This shloka echoes and reinf orces the recent work by Joseph Schumpeter[3] on creative destruction andinnovation f ollowed by a number of other researchers. The most important issue in management of changeis one of mind set. The biggest challenge in organizations is mind set inertia. You can discard many thingsbut mindset is very dif f icult to discard. This puts realistic limits to creating better organizations over t ime.

Another example can be f ound in a paper t it led “May the Whole Earth be Happy: Lokaa Samstaa SukhinoBhavnatu” written by a Canadian, Staf f ord Beer in 1994[4] in an Operations Research Journal. In this paper,Beer shows how a shloka in Chapter 3 of Gita (3.27: अह ार- िवमूढा मा कताहिमित म यते) indeed relates to someof the issues that arise in cybernetics and control theory. He also mentioned several other concepts f romthe Ancient Indian wisdom in the same paper relating them to certain management principles.

Relevant thoughts for Management

If we develop the skill, orientation and attitude to draw upon the repository of knowledge f or our day to dayliving issues (such as Business Management), then we will realize that the world of ancient Indian wisdomopens up. One may locate a number of direct and relevant thoughts in these texts. Let us look at one ortwo examples f rom Gita on the issue of relevant thoughts f or today. The f ollowing shloka f rom Gita,chapter 3 is a case in point:

अथ केन यु ोऽय ंपाप ंचरित पू षः ।

अिन छ िप वा णय बलािदव िनयो जतः ॥ 3.36.

In this shloka, Arjuna raises a question which is very pertinent to most of us. We have had severaloccasions in our personal and prof essional lif e during which we would have internally asked the samequestion.

Who is behind all these bad or wrong things that people do? Although I am not interested it appears I amforcibly involved into this.

In f act you ask managers who have erred in their decisions or committed some blunder, you ask f atherswho have made blunders of scolding their children or taken wrong decisions about their daughter or son.They will always say something similar to this shloka. There is this f eeling – I have become a victim of a situation as though somebody is pushing me to do wrong things. We have gone through this f rame ofmind in our daily lif e. We are going through this f rame of mind every now and then in Management. Krishnaof f ers some explanation as to why this is happening in the shlokas that f ollow.

Gita also of f ers perspectives on how to manage certain things in lif e, understand complex things that wego through in simple terms (just as the example of birth and death). It also of f ers direct ideas and sets usin a state of contemplation. One example will help drive this point.

मा ा पश तु कौ तेय शीतो णसुखदःुखदाः ।

आगमापाियनोऽिन याः तां तती व भारत ॥ 2.14.

The meaning of the shloka is as f ollows:

As long as the five senses are active in gathering the signals that come into contact with them, we willexperience the world of dualities – hot and cold, peace and sorrow etc. You cannot run away from the world ofdualities as they happen continuously and are also impermanent. Learning to handle them is important.

Stress management is a big issue today. Most of the knowledge and help we get f rom the modern daythinking is to suppress or divert our attention f rom the issue of stress. They implicit ly operate with anassumption that stress will be inevitably generated and the solution lies in doing something about it oncewe are stressed. “Let us kill it or run away f rom it by some means af ter it happens” is the basis f or stressmanagement. We do not seem to address why one should get stressed in the f irst place.

The nature o f wo rk acco rd ing to Bhag avad G ita

On the other hand, this shloka addresses this issue and truly provides us an idea f or “managing” stress. Itis all about signal processing. We have to dif f erentiate between signals and noise. That is the idea here.We don’t do so because we don’t have the capability of signal processing. That does not mean we can turnof f the apparatus and stop receiving the signals. That happens only when we are in a state of coma. Thatis not what Lord Krishna is saying. Gita never recommends running away f rom problems. On the otherhand it seems to suggest that understanding problems in the right perspective is key to managing them. That is the greatest management lesson that one can learn. The idea of managing the world of duality(सम व ंयोग उ यते) has been one of the key messages in the Gita and it has been repeatedly emphasized notonly in chapter 2, but also in several other chapters. This could very well be the cornerstone of developingsuperior self - and people management skills and leadership traits.

Basic approach to work in Gita

Management is all about doing work, doing it ef f iciently and ensuring that results f ollow. Viewed f rom thisperspective, Gita of f ers counter- intuit ive ideas on these issues (see f igure f or a basic f ramework depictingthis).

Work & Its effect iveness as the Core

Of ten people comment that the central message inBhagavad Gita is about the notion of karma yoga. Ofrelevance to management is the notion of karma yogaand its essence in terms of work. It will be very usef ulto understand how this issue is laid out in the Gita.First of all Lord Krishna establishes a paradigm thatthere is nothing called “the state of inaction”. Heclearly says in chapter 3 that there is nothing likeakarma (no action or inaction) (3:5 न च णमिप जातुित यकमकृत्). There is nothing like a state of inaction. Why did he say that? Because only then we will f ocuson the issue of how to do work correctly. It is naturalthen f or us to ask how to do work. He says enjoycomplete degree of f reedom (3:9 य ाथा कमणोऽ यलोकोऽय ंकमब धनः, 3:31 ाव तोऽनसूय तः मु य ते तेऽिप कमिभः) and total joy while engaging in work. That is the idea. While we are in the thick of work can we enjoy? Gita emphatically replies in the af f irmative. Krishna goes tothe extent of saying that with such a perspective to work, we may realize that even when we do a lot ofwork, we do not f eel like indeed engaging in any work (4:20 कम यिभ वृ ोऽिप नवै िकि करोित सः).

If you think that this is a utopian idea simply ask a mother tending to her child with great love anddedication. She will relate herself to this shloka. If only we could ask some of the greatest social workersand inspiring leaders that this society has produced they might have replied in the af f irmative.

This is again in contrast with our understanding of work and its ef f ects on us today. One of the biggestproblems that we are f acing in our daily lif e, prof essional work and personal lif e is that we don’t seem toenjoy what we are doing. Swami Ranganathananda mentions that there was no word like boredom in thedictionary about 400 years – 600 years ago[5]. Today the children say “I am bored”. Young prof essionalswant to adopt the western model of “weekend getaway”. We need weekend getaways if work is perceivedas drudgery and an avoidable aspect of our lif e. Such a perspective can never get the best f rom work placethat modern business management is worried about. What is this boredom? Why does it happen? Becausewe don’t enjoy what we are doing, we get bored.

The basic tenet of Gita is antithesis to this idea that work could be drudgery. First understand there isnothing like state of no work. We cannot run away f rom work as there is nothing called “no work”. Further ifyou enjoy complete f reedom of doing work result has to f ollow. That is the basic line of argument that Isee in Gita. Lord Krishna says that it is possible that you can have complete degree of f reedom and enjoywork. This is the basic thread of argument I see in the text which I think is very relevant f or management.

Axioms of work

As we have already seen, there is no escaping f rom work. Theref ore, let us understand how the axioms ofwork have been proposed in Gita. There are f our aspects to this, which is very well brought out in thisf amous shloka in Gita:

कम येवा धकार ते मा फलेषु कदाचन ।

मा कमफलहेतुभूः मा ते स ो वकमिण ॥ . 2.47.

A direct translation of this shloka is as f ollows:

You have the right to work but never to the fruits of the action. Further you do not have the right to the rootcause of the fruits of action. You also do not have the right to remain in the society without performing anywork.

As we notice f rom the above translation, there are f our components of the axiom of work def ined in Gita. Itis much easier to explain the rationale of the last component. When one is told that he/she has to do thework, he/she does not ask f or results or bother about what causes these results, the normal tendency insome cases is to say, “well in that case, I am not interested in doing the work”. The last component takesaway that possibility. Since in Gita, the notion of non-work or inaction is not a f easible alternative, the lastcomponent makes sense. The most dif f icult part is the second and the third component. How can someonedo the work and yet not have the right f or results? This requires some more articulation and understandingof the idea.

Let us see it f rom the management perspective. The current day thinking and this are in loggerheads. Weare told that we need to work f or results. Why is then Lord Krishna advocating the antithesis of this? Inorder to get this clear, let us trace some side ef f ects of working f or results. Many of us with some workexperience will be able to relate to these side ef f ects:

Result orientation can make one wary of f ailures, we may ref use to undertake great activit ies(modern risk management issue comes into play). Yesterday I read in the paper that an 8th standardstudent ended her lif e because she did not clear the exam. What a tragedy and what a side ef f ectthat we need to f ace?

We have a tendency to excessively f ocus on ends instead of means. This is what most working inMulti-National Companies are busy doing. Modern day managers spend signif icant t ime to manager“perf ormance reports” rather than “perf ormance” itself .

In order to be good in managing the perf ormance report, “process orientation” must give way f or“result orientation”

What are results at the end of the day? They are issues of the f uture about which we spend ourtime in the present. Theref ore, we may tend to escape the dynamics of “present” and go af ter“f uture”

The apparent conf usion that we have in understanding this shloka is that when we say you have no right tothe results, it merely suggests that take of f your pre-occupation with results and have a processorientation. Results must f ollow automatically. Is it not what the total quality management (TQM)philosophy is also arguing about? Further, you may ask, why do we want to take the f ixation f rom resultsand instead concentrate on the work itself ? The simple answer to it is that by doing do it lets you literally“get lost in work”. When one gets lost into work, the tradit ional barriers of ef f iciency and motivation arebroken and the individual treads into extraordinary perf ormance born out of inspiration. Perhaps, that ishow a Nobel Laureate or a great scientist or a visionary leader would have spent several years of his/hertime.

We of ten say when we do very interesting things in lif e, “I never knew how time passed” That is a goodindication of our ability to practice कम येवा धकार ते मा फलेषु कदाचन. This is neither an unknown or impossibleidea to mankind. Every day we all practice this when we have deep sleep. We rise f rom the deep sleep andremark that we had a sound sleep. By that what it means is no matter what sound others made in thevicinity I continued to sleep. Try to sleep with an objective of having a 6 hour sound sleep and work f or theresult, you will not get sound sleep. Your mind will work very hard to f ind out how to ensure 6 hours ofdeep sleep and in the process you will get t ired. Maybe af ter some time when the analytical and result-oriented mind gets f atigued, you will slip into deep sleep.

The ancient Indian texts such as Bhagavad Gita are prof ound and are meant to open up the horizon in theminds of the people. Theref ore it is hardly surprising that we can draw such alternative ideas and thoughtsf rom such texts. However, in order to benef it f rom this immensely, in the domain of management, we needto step out of the world of rationality and tread into unknown areas. Perhaps a nearest ref erence to thisidea in modern day is “out of the box” thinking or thinking “without” the box. This in itself is a paradigm shif tin perception that we need to make in our own mind.

Conclusions

There are several other usef ul ideas in Gita f or management. There are specif ic ideas f or management thataddress issues pertaining to self , self -mastery and self -assessment. There are also specif ic suggestionson the leadership traits.

Bhagavad Gita and f or that matter in several other ancient Indian texts of f er a unique value proposition. Wecan have spiritual progress, we can have material progress too in a very balanced way. We can havehappiness, not only success. This could be one of the good reasons f or us to look at some of theseand make our own notes. There is a greater promise and potential f or much larger perspectives in ancientIndian wisdom and much greater propensity to draw out of it and apply in a variety of situations.

[1] This is based on a talk delivered by Professor B Mahadevan, Dean (Administration), Indian Institute ofManagement Bangalore in a seminar on “Towards a New Paradigm of Business management – AlternativePerspectives from Ancient Indian Wisdom”, held at IIM Bangalore on December 12, 2009.mahadev@iimb.ernet.in

[2] http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/ai/aboutopp.htm

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter

[4] Beer, S. (1994). “May the Whole Earth be Happy: Lokaasamastaa Sukhino Bhavantu”, Interfaces, Vol. 24,No. 4, 83 – 93.

[5] Swami Ranganthananda, (2000). “The Universal Message of Gita”, Advaita Ashrama, Kolkatta, Vol. 1,pp. 430 – 437.