From Drucker To Yoga

Conventional modern business: Capturing marketshare, outsmarting competition, fightng brands, ensnaring customers and making a killing. Business is war.

Conventional business leaders: Workaholics, driven by money and power, alienated from colleagues, subordinates and family, empowered by hierarchy, control and aggression, whose worth is evaluated by contribution to bottomlines.

Conventional business organisations: Pyramidal structures; productivity is capacity utilisation; marketing is about satisfying customer needs, not solving problems; quality is about labels like ISO-2000, TQM and QC.

DEFYING the 'systematic havoc' created by Western-oriented management, and merging business with the country's culture, the Sri Sringeri Sharada Institute of Management hopes to metamorphose India Inc, from competition to cooperation, from war to peace, from Drucker to Yoga.Its formula: Viveka management, or managing by wisdom.

Set up in 1996, Sri Sringeri looks more like a centre of religious or spiritual activity than an educational institute for future business managers. All—students, teachers, visitors—have to take off their shoes before entering "the temple of learning" housed in a small temple complex in New Delhi's posh Vasant Vihar.

However, S.K. Palhan, director of the institute and expert in technology management and project financing, dismisses any religious underpinnings to the course. "Our management programme is a healthy blend of Western management techniques directly linked to the needs of industry, and universal Indian values that transcend all religions," he says. The values: self-control, intellectual honesty, respect for others, sincerity, openness, striving for excellence and continuous improvement.

The Western management system, says Palhan, is diametrically opposed to the Indian ethos in terms of how it defines ends, means to reach the ends and in its system of rewards and punishment. For starters, the nucleus of Western business is the bottomline; everything else is built around it. Thus, modern business education is geared to impart knowledge and skills for careers in managerial accounting, finance, operations management, marketing management and information resource management. The health of a company is measured in terms of its balancesheet and the yardstick for efficiency is profitability.

Thus, the organisational culture becomes one of competitiveness rather than cooperation, the management style is one of aggression and control, and the objective of life is money and power. Every manager then is searching for short cuts in order to achieve goals; the means—fair or foul—are irrelevant. There are three areas where Sri Sringeri is actively pursuing change:

PEOPLE ORIENTATION: In Viveka management, the purpose of education is not to prepare students just for careers with money as their goal, but for managing life in totality. "We teach our students the objective of life is a balanced pursuit of dharma (duty), artha (wealth), kama (pleasure) and moksha (release). Only this can bring about happiness, not money," says Palhan. In this model, work is done not for material comforts, but for atmano mokshartam (self-realisation) and bahujan hitaya cha (serving the good of the many). The concept of wealth itself changes from property, asset acquisition, money to information, ideas, wisdom. The yardsticks for growth are not profits, pay, promotions but infi-nite perfection and the joy of serving. "This is the essence of value-based education."

ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE:In the traditional pyramidal structure, the majority of workers are alienated from the leaders of the organisation as well as from the customers who they cater to. In between are hierarchies of managers. They are redundant, according to the proponents of Viveka management. In this model, productivity should not be measured in terms of plant capacity but human capacity; leaders are those who produce performers, not results; resources do not lie outside but are internal to an organisation; and employees can be inspired, not through financial rewards, but through autonomy in decision-making and creative outlets. It recommends self-managing teams of workers, not a ruler-based system.

SELF-DEVELOPMENT: A third feature that the alternative system seeks to promote is self-development. "The existing education and training focuses on personality development that essentially is about cosmetic change—how to dress for an interview, handle tricky questions, speak with confidence, write for results, manage tasks and time. Our focus is to teach life skills—emotional stability, stress management, power of concentration, experiencing oneness with self and through it with others," says Palhan.

Humanistic and holistic is how the proponents of Viveka management describe their alternative system. They are also proud of the practical component of their formal education that will give them a post-graduate diploma in business management at the end of two years. At the daily sadhna, for instance, students studying for the diploma squat on the floor, close their eyes and concentrate on focusing on the environment through sound, thoughts and chanting verses. "It's a mind exercise that helps develop the faculty of concentration," says Palhan.

The institute is managed by self-managing teams (SMTs) of students who take care of their own summer placements, public relations, industrial visits, curriculum. As part of these teams, students undertake real business projects which fulfill the need of a group of people by solving their problems. In the process they earn money for the service rendered. For instance, one of the teams recently approached the shopkeepers in the neighbouring market and persuaded them to maintain a computerised record of their accounts. The project is now earning money for the team. Another team runs money-generating canteen facilities, yet another markets products made by the vocational wing of the Sringeri education centre. "Our aim is not to create a group of job-seekers but entrepreneurs who lend to their work the spirit of excellence which is yoga and approach their job with the feeling of oneness," says Palhan.

How pertinent and practical is this approach in the real, cut-throat world of competitive enterprise? Sunil Kumar, who teaches Indian ethos at the institute, cites the example of Ayodhya Paper Mills that has implemented the concept of SMTs in its factory as the shining example of the workability of alternative managing in the real world. The company has gone on to become a world-class exporter of paper from a small, local-area operation ever since its day-to-day operations have been handed over to a team of workers. "Empowered workers are happy and responsible workers. A worker who has the trust of the leader works hard to keep it," says Kumar. Palhan quotes the example of companies like Sam-tel, Eicher, Excel Industries and Logicstat who have incorporated the Indian ethos into their systems and reaped a rich harvest.

Why, even foreign companies are talking of values of team work, dismantling hierarchy, empowering workers. Japan, Korea and Germany have achieved success by blending global science, technology and techniques with local ethos, leadership styles, relationships and work practices.

Asks Palhan: "Why then not draw upon our rich repertoire of values to forge ahead?" Why not?