Like a canvas, the blueprint of any organization's success is contingent upon the interplay of people- its teams that trigger success. Leadership as a skill sounded far more complicated than it sounds. I had read a verse in Bhagavad Gita saying, leaders hands are tied, they lose the degrees of freedom and the whole world will keenly watch the leaders’ action and blindly follow the leaders
(यदि ह्यहं न वर्तेयं जातु कर्मण्यतन्द्रितः।
मम वर्त्मानुवर्तन्ते मनुष्याः पार्थ सर्वशः।।3.23।।)
One of the biggest problems today is that leaders do not practice this value. They think they are above board and in several cases, this idea stretches to such a level that they being to think that they are “above law”.
मात्रास्पर्शास्तु कौन्तेय शीतोष्णसुखदु: खदा: |
आगमापायिनोऽनित्यास्तांस्तितिक्षस्व भारत || 2.14||
According to Lord Krishna, the world is full of dualities, it will blow hot and cold and we will experience joy and happiness as well as some unpleasant moments. These are the realities of life and they will come and go. If we do not learn to endure them and go through this life as a roller coaster ride, we will never be able to exhibit leadership traits.
So, a leader has invariably needed to be a Yogi in his life.
With these curiosities in my mind, I happened to join the Human Resources Management course at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Management and Leadership is an art, not hard science. It can not be learned within the confines in a classroom. Rather, it has to be learned through the everyday experiences of dealing with people, taking up new endeavours, and pushing oneself beyond the limits. And this is exactly where the TISS model enjoys its unique value proposition. It’s not a true blue B school, it one notch more awesome than that. Management being an art, TISS opens up a blank canvas in front of you whereupon you may paint your inner spirit through multitudes of colours. The colours represented by a mix of fieldwork internships, foundations courses, over 30 credit courses ranging across 15 different social science schools, dissertation, mental health counselling, to whatnot. There is no other such school that gives you this level of flexibility in your management education curriculum as TISS does. Where else can you study operations management in a day's class and attend a dharna against the atrocities done by a local factory owner against its daily wage labourers in the local industrial suburb?
Having spent nearly a year here, my key learnings have been widened par infinity and can be classified into following buckets:
1- I believe the problem arises with an extremely myopic approach in which governments, businesses, and our generation are taking towards life. It's unsustainable and mundane. Looking for windfall gain by overlooking the bigger picture and sustainability aspect is a classic design thinking failure. Look everywhere and you’ll find remnants of this error. Climate change, unsustainable business practices, short term centric policy designs by governments, IL&FS crisis, etc. etc. and you will find this classic error underlying it all. Basically, people only identify conveniently with issues that have quick emotive appeal to them. Take terrorism for that matter and the fact that it is deplored unequivocably. Why? Because it has a face and an emotive appeal. It’s the short-termism that has created all sorts of design issues in the systems in place.
So what is to be done?- I believe a fundamental shift in perspectives would be required. This is where education and pedagogy triggered through experiential learning comes into play. TISS provides a diverse mix of multidisciplinary pedagogy. It complements it with experiential learning opportunities where theories can be put into practice. Having been part of the entrepreneurship club of the institute, I have been part of the National CSR hub, which focuses on advising corporate about the sustainability aspect of their initiatives. Similarly, the unique mix of organizational and individual psychology educates us about the human biases which may creep in during the course of our decision making and the need for us to be sensitive to that. I presently am pursuing a dissertation on the criticality of Karma Gunas and its role in the Leadership potential of a leader. After all, transformational leadership requires a high degree of altruism and selflessness on the part of a leader. Nishkama Karma, as articulated in Gita, teaches precisely that.
So, the bottom line is this only- organizations are being too myopic in their assessment of viewing sustainability as a burden on their short term profitability. Rather, if viewed from a fresh perspective, it can be realized, both qualitatively and quantitatively that value creation, in the long run, is only possible by creating synergies among all the stakeholders by interlinking self-interests of one another. HR professionals can play a paramount role in transforming this mindset of senior leaders.
2- Realizing the unlimited power of teamwork- I happened to read a book on the suggestion of a friend named, The Wisdom of the Crowds. It proved so beautifully that how on a quantitative as well as qualitative level, synergistically designed teams of even mediocre performers can outperform any individualized effort of even the most brilliant of minds. It was as beautiful as seeing the law of large numbers and the concept of regression to mean at work. On a philosophical level, I could connect it to the idea of Advaita Vedanta wherein Shankaracharya has spoken about the concept of Brahman as the ultimate reality and the way it underlies everything, In this way, it distinguishes the differences between all human beings. True enlightenment lies in our ability to identify this nonduality and integrate ourselves with the idea of collective conscience.
Similarly, Sri Aurobindo has beautifully articulated his idea of collective evolution wherein he believes that mankind is at the brink of evolution to a supermind consciousness and a prerequisite to that is our ability to shade away individual differences and enjoy the blissfulness of collective conscience.
Consistent with this is the idea that I learned through my work on CSR projects- that we essentially need to redefine capitalism to capture the essence of value creation through established synergies.
3- Artificial intelligence- the skill of the future, the bread and butter of data science, and the backbone of robotics- is a hot topic nowadays. Barring the obvious much talked about the potential of data sciences, there are certain pitfalls that can’t be overlooked. The aspects such as emotional quotient, intelligence, sensitivity are the endowments of human touch which can’t be overlooked in our approach towards data-based decision making. More than ever, data-based algorithms are now susceptible to misuse as once human error or biases creep into the algorithms, it will be really difficult to correct. Moreover, the damages would be cumulative and would grow exponentially.
In addition to this, another aspect of human error comes from the tendency of overfitting. Classically human beings live to retrospectively connect the dots and try to fit the theories in terms of their belief systems. Even if the reality would have been otherwise, there is a tendency among professionals to retrospectively fit things into a set pattern. Taking the correlation between two things and confusing it for a cause-effect relationship, is one example of this approach.
This is again where I believe my liberal arts background and the cross-disciplinary pedagogy of TISS comes in handy. TISS teaches people to groom themselves as socially sensitive and analytical individuals who listen to reason under varying circumstances. People with such endowments are capable of identifying their own blindspots objectively and address them effectively. TISS teaches us to optimally utilize the prowess of data sciences but at the same time be sensitive to the audit trail of algorithms. As Stephen Hawkins rightly said, our future is a face between the growing power of technology and wisdom with which we use it. Let’s make sure wisdom wins.
4- Preparing for a VUCA world- The classical model of organizational designs and jobs are increasingly put under question nowadays. With a fastly changing environment, job demands are changing rapidly. Agility is the buzz word and it requires to be exhibited at all levels within the organization design. Organizations are looking for intrapreneurs- folks who are ever agile and willing to take up any task at hand and adapt quickly. From the classical ATTRACT, DEVELOP AND RETAIN model of talent management, they are moving towards ACCESS, CURATE, and ENGAGE model. The gig economy is the new buzzword and nearly 24% of the global gig market is constituted by Indian labor. India stands second only to the US in this aspect and is a sure shot to overcome this.
Basically, this idea is related to the theory of instant gratification which is commonly found among the present generation. It’s the short-termism inflicted within our psyche wherein we require our desires to be fulfilled as soon as possible with minimum hassles. Gig employment and intrapreneurship models are going to be the job designs of the future and it shall require transformational, distributive and situational leadership on the part of the HR manager to manage this effectively.
In other words, the coming era is going to be a watershed moment in the landscape of work definition and organizational design. And HR is going to be at the driver seat of change, driving innovation in employment models, leadership training, stakeholder management, and instilling an agile workforce.
About the Author
Bhaskar Rochak is a first-year master's student in Human Resources Management and Labour Relations at TISS Mumbai, with a keen interest in Human capital consulting. His hobbies include writing about public policy issues and reading crime fiction novels.