Managing and Leading Consciousness
By Manohar Man Shrestha
Recently, a Nepali mendicant made a prophecy that the world would come to an end some day between June 22 and July 10. Nothing like that happened and the baba was then condemned. As it appeared he was not in a proper state of mind and it can also be concluded that some other people with more resources and more cunning intention were using him to create havoc. Who were they? Who stood to gain from this panic? As a direct outcome, even I was coaxed to buy extra stock of food grains and other suitable things. If anyone got anything out of that, it would have been the businessmen who sold those food items. But why are the businessmen like that?
It is because they seek profit in every thing they do. There is nothing wrong in that. Yet many of us have developed a kind of profit-phobia. As a result we find ourselves stuck in professions where we cannot optimize profit from our skills, experiences, time and devotion.
‘Add–value–and–strive’ mentality
Keshu has worked hard for a chain-retailer for over 10 years. He must have started young but now he is the father of three children, pot-bellied, long-winded in speech, cynical yet with the childish spirit of his earlier days. He is not old (only in his early forties) but he has resigned himself to the fate of a salary less than Rs. 6,000 per month. In his eyes, it is the highest he can get but it doesn’t stop him from wishing more. “Even if I leave this place for another job, I can’t expect more than Rs. 3000 per month. Life is like this,” he thinks.
There is a Keshu in all of us. He is the part of us that has stopped learning, that has stopped dreaming, that has stopped daring, that has stopped refusing to believe in our doomed fate. He is the part of us that is blind to our own talent, that calls us mediocre, that is lazy and that feels powerless. He is that part of us, which doesn’t know life is about getting the most of it from what is available to us; which has blocked the torrent of creativity from flowing into our lives; which has confused personal growth with selfishness; which is ignorant about giving value and getting a premium on that.
Thus I counseled him, “The same cup of tea cost Rs. 10 at a local shop and Rs. 200 in a five star hotel: that is value and getting a premium on that. Keshu, you’ve got talent, experience has sharpened your skills, you’ve got a charming personality and the right attitude. But your problem is that you don’t know how to present all your assets to your employer. Then you are also afraid of change, even though for good reasons (family obligations). The transformation from ‘local’ status to five-star status starts in your heart and moves to your mind and then into your actions finally coming out in the form of words of self-praise. That is how men of modest beginnings have risen to dizzying heights of fortune. You can emulate them, at least to get a better salary.
“Will a customer pay thrice the amount for a product just because the shop-keeper feels it is not fair for him? No, he must give more value and then only can he command a higher price (bear in mind the analogy of local and five-star). Keshu, you have got to give a better performance and that too is not enough. You must be able to link your performance to the gain of your employer. It doesn’t stop here. You must communicate to him about your enhanced performance.”
Half-full Vs half-empty
Instead of thinking like businessmen, we employees feel like victims. We feel we have been subjected to injustice and exploitation. It may be true, but it is only one side of the story. This is the old operating system that controls our way of thinking. We now need a paradigm shift. We still think of our employers as kings and ourselves as citizens of their kingdom. Now we need to see ourselves as service-providers and them as clients. We think that financial rewards are scarce and limited as is the area of farmable land in Nepal due to mountains all over. Now we should rather see limitless opportunities for anyone to be rich who so desires. Yes mountains are obstructions but they also present infinite opportunities for us to climb to the heights.
Krishna gave Arjun, the master archer, which was engulfed in chagrin and self-remorse for having to fight with his family members. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says, “Lucky are the few to whom such opportunities to fight for justice and fulfill their duties come unsought. So, son of Partha, take your sword and fight.”
But seeing the ranges upon ranges of mountains of problems in the present Nepali scenario: the political complexity, the deep-rooted nature of our social stigma, the daunting obstacles faced in implementing any plan, etc. we the Nepali people have shown two reactions. One is that of the ostrich which, upon sensing any danger, buries its head in the ground. The other is that of migratory birds flying across many oceans and surpassing so many dangers in search of food and conducive environment.
On the other hand, people from foreign countries come to Nepal to conquer our mountains. What an irony! Bored by the mundane, stifled by the secured life, tired of the routine, enamored by the unknown and captivated by heroism, so many people visit to our country from distant lands. What we worship as god’s will, they consider as challenges to meet. That is the paradigm shift I am talking about.
Heal thyself first
Along with the political frameworks mutating, so must the consciousness of Nepali change. We must start taking responsibility for this fate and stop passing it on to others. Earlier, it was to the gods, and now it is to the super-powers. That must stop.
We must move from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge, from poverty to wealth, from stagnation to creativity.
We talk a lot about what we want in the political aspects. At times, I feel like puking intellectually: the same political debates are on TV, on the newspapers, on the net. Now let us talk about what we want for the individual Nepalis.
In many of my workshops, I make the participants draw their dreams for the future: how they see themselves 5 years, 10 years, and 20 years from now. Having seen the personal visions of hundreds of Nepalis from all sectors and levels, I have come to the conclusion that being rich is part and parcel of every Nepali person’s dream. At times it takes the form of a house, at other times a motor-car, plane, fine clothes or extended family. Also there is the typical drawing of a seed, a bud, a small plant and finally a tree; then of a small business with few employees, more employees, more businesses, expansion all over Nepal and finally around the globe. Most of the participants had never delved into themselves to discover what they wanted in life. They end up as surprised as a caterpillar would be if told it will become a butterfly.
So, we can say that any Nepali individual, whether he or she is a politician, a banker, a hotelier, a mason, a contractor, a cook, a driver, an entrepreneur, a business-man, a government officer, a farmer, an unemployed, a criminal, a housewife, a child, a beggar, a villager, an employee, wants security, dignity, a sense of abundance and avenues for growth.
Three keys to personal profit
It means, what an ordinary Nepali wants is in no way different than what a business-man wants. Only difference is in the semantic–the businessman says he wants ‘profit’. He defines it in terms of money, others do it in terms of self-satisfaction. Money is a way by which the business-man gets self-satisfied. Each of us has our own means to be self-satisfied. All of us must become profit-oriented.
Imagine that you are an establishment. Your soul is the CEO, your mind constitutes the pool of managers, your body makes the employees, and your heart is the founder. The shareholders are your family members. Your spouse and parents are the board members. Your mission like any business is to make profit. Only difference is that here profit is not purely money but, as we mentioned above, it represents happiness, fortune and development. Here are three tips for you, the soul (CEO), to navigate your life’s ship in the seas of Nepali life:
1. Have patience:
Just recently we had to hire a trainer from outside to complete a project. But he had no patience and tried to steal the contract from us. Obviously he did not learn from the story of the chicken that lays golden eggs. As we all remember, the farmer, greedy and in a hurry to get rich quick, cut open that chicken to get all the golden eggs at once. Sadly there was none. More than anywhere else, patience is the first criteria to make profits in Nepal. Like in climbing Mount Everest, the economic weather in Nepal is unpredictable. You never know when an avalanche will fall, when a snowstorm will engulf you. You have to walk slowly, because there are economic crevasses here and there. A faux-pas and you will fall so low you will never be able to come up again unlike in the US where you declare bankruptcy in one state and start anew in another state. Donald Trump (real-estate mogul), Anthony Robbins (motivational speaker), Robert T. Kiyasaki (writer of Rich Dad, Poor Dad) and many more went though such cycles before making it big. However, we rarely hear of such come-backs in Nepal. The Amatya Group is still in the financial doldrums, falling further. We all know of many small business-men who never recuperated from losses have exiled forever to social shame.
2. Analyze:
Owing to our lack of scientific culture, we fail to ask the question, “Is there any proof or evidence suggesting so and so?” This is a major cause of our undoing as individuals in Nepal. We think that there is a gain in some business and we jump into it without making a study, leave doing any kind of investigation like SWOT. Do I have the strengths (S) to get into this new line? What weaknesses (W) do I have that could prevent me from succeeding and how can I transform them into strengths? Are the opportunities (O) that I see real or are they just temporary or worse just a mirage born out of my desire? What are the threats (T) that could ruin me? Many shops open in town without doing a SWOT analysis, and they end up closing in a few months. Many of our Nepali brothers and sisters find themselves stranded in foreign lands as a result. Many of us are trapped in loans, unfulfilling careers and dead-ends in terms of financial progress because we failed to do a SWOT analysis. It is not your fault: your managers (mind) were not trained. But now you don’t have any more excuses.
3. Be creative:
A group of people abducts a young man, Jill, as he is back from his office. First they tail him in his car. Finally they sandwich his car, get him out, blind-fold him, bind his hands, put him in the trunk, torture him and finally release him. A typical kidnapping scenario. Only hard part to get is the last one that serves as an anti-climax. The reason is that Jill is the client of this group of people, Kidnap Inc. They provide mock kidnapping services in the USA. Where else could you find such outrageous creativity? Jill is a happy customer like many others of Kidnap Inc.
No need to be frustrated
In Nepal we are frustrated because it seems we cannot earn a living or make profits out of life without conforming to status quo. Isn’t it what ‘Ja-geer’ means – go and conform? It is time to change by being creative. So that is why I make participants come up with a creative structure of resources provided to them ranging from newspaper, empty bottles, recycled paper, color ribbons, sand, clay and so on. They report that they feel they are in the nursery classes: they realize they are still creative.
Some time back my business partner faced a depression. The training industry is not growing as fast as we want it, profits are meager: so, may be it is time to change business. Yes but change to what? Open a grocery shop? Start a school, college or a finance company? This is a trap. “Let’s be creative”, I told her. “What do we do? We provide training. How do we do that? We offer innovative learning technologies. And? We need to market and sell our trainings. So what are our strengths? Training and marketing. So, if training is not selling well, how about we focus on marketing? Of what? Start with to whom. Who are our clients? They are various levels of many organizations (strengths: database and relationships). Lets find out what else besides training they might want to buy from us. Then our strength is in selling new concepts. Let’s find out who is finding it hard to sell and market their new products (opportunity: other’s weakness). Let’s start Marketing Icon…”
No longer a secret
You might be stuck in a job you don’t like, that doesn’t pay well enough. You might be out of a job looking for a new job or a business to start. Your business might be in shambles. You might be considering going for greener pastures across the seas. Yet my point is simple: think like a businessman. Define what profits mean to you. Work hard to maximize those profits. If there is anything that threatens them, drop them like a diabetic leaves sugar. Know what your worth is. Sometime ago a writer wrote a book. At first it was unsold. Then he changed the title and the cover as well as packaging. Guess what? It became a smashing hit. Learn to add value and ask a raise for it instead of saying, “Times are hard, inflation is high and I have worked so long here: so you owe me.” Those who make lakhs of rupees a month have been hiding this secret from the general mass. Now I have unveiled the mystery of personal wealth creation. Use it. The world has not come to a physical end and should not, but let our psychological worlds shake to their foundations so that a new one can be built again, based on value addition, wisdom, patience, analysis and creativity. Let’s herald the new Nepali consciousness, one of abundance and glory.
(Shrestha is Senior Trainer & Advisor of Standard Icon Pvt. Ltd.)
Western Vs Vedantic management
By Dr. J Ghosh
The World is teeming with the human inventions from weaving to the Internet, with the stories of sordid politics from slavery to empires, with accounts of missionary zeal from monks to human right activists, with the obscenely rich and the appallingly poor every specie of commodity from coffee to ivory, making and unmaking the world as we know it. The contradictions are visible everywhere. Things are imbued with a strange kind of restlessness and turbulence. “The problem of life is becoming deeper and broader everyday as the world moves on. The watchword and the essence have been preached in the days of yore when the Vedantic truth (i.e. the solidarity of all life) was first discovered. One atom in this universe cannot move without dragging the whole world along with it. There cannot be any progress without the whole world following in the wake. . . .” This was how Sw. Vivekananda, the management monk, presented the holistic outlook as the solution to global problems in 1897 in his speech at Madras.
The modern management guru Peter F Drucker says in his book ‘Managing in the Next Millennium’ (1995) “Managers from now on will be increasingly ineffectual. . . the people with whom the executives will have to deal will be the people over whom he has no authority whatsoever. “ Armsterdam-based management expert Theisen writes: “Our world has changed, society has changed but assumptions about management have significantly stayed much the same. Tomorrow’s managers will have to possess new capabilities; imaginative capabilities; inspirational capabilities. They need intuition.” So, today we need to rethink seriously our notions of management. Before one can manage successfully, it is necessary to know precisely what one is managing.
Every management system, whether of society, organization, government, business, non-business, industry or education has a goal, a philosophy and a system. But man is in the first part of the word ‘manager’, thereby indicating need for man-management as the most crucial part of management. Management is an intuitive art of relating your self with stakeholders in a company such as staff, customers and suppliers. Self-management is at the base of any external management effort. It is an internal process of managing one’s body, thought, intellect, emotion and spirit. The self within is the source of all power. “Atmana vindate viryam”-Infinite strength springs from the SELF within. We cannot see outside what we are not inside.
Today’s manager is required to have qualities of a good leader. Thus he has to have the ability to construct a creative vision. Love begets love. Hatred begets hatred. Trust begets trust. Gratitude begets gratitude. Respect begets respect and empowerment begets responsible productivity. If tomorrow’s management fails to accept these “holistic paradigm,” it is going to have, writes Theisen, a “paradigm paralysis.”
There are certain key differences between Western Management Philosophy and Vedantic Management one. The former starts with the premise that a person remains inactive unless propelled by action through motivation-money incentive, promotion or recognition. Vedantic-management starts with the belief that every individual is divine by nature and the purpose of life is to bring out this divinity. Any individual, by nature, wants to do good work but unsuitable conditioning may prevent him from doing so.
The Western management philosophy puts primary emphasis on competition, goal achievement for the firm. Competition rouses envy, and it kills the kindliness of the heart. In Vedantic way, the emphasis is on collaboration and individual creativity. Automatically the success of the firm is a by-product of the holistic goal of making this world a better place to live in with the spirit of Yajna. In the West, work is an input which can be hired, while Vedantic philosophy focuses on duty as one’s dharma. “ Sukhasya Mulam Dharmam–The root of all happiness lies in righteous action.”
Today it is strategic management which works for group success against an opponent. Jhon Naisbitt writes in the conclusion of Mega-trends (60 weeks Best Seller in U.S: Warner Book: 1994: p . 279-80 ) “We are clinging to the known past in the fear of the unknown future” and clinging to “centralized , industrialized and hierarchical system” and “high-tech short termed solutions”. Naisbitt cautions the West: “We must not lose sight of the need to balance the human element in the face of all technology.” Still we have not yet developed a consciousness that is commensurate with our globalised future.
The future generation is poised to see the rise of new heroes of management and administration, a combination of Western efficiency and dynamism with the holistic Vedantic approach of service to the divine in human beings in order to manifest the inherent divinity and ultimate glory and joy of life.
(Dr Ghosh is CEO of National Insurance Company Limited)
Going an Extra Mile
By Harendra Thapa
“Customers are gods”, is a phrase which is innate with all business ventures. However, how many do you think walk the talk in this regard? Today the businesses do demand the implementation of the aforesaid phrase to the very core of its sense but the degree of extent to which customers are given due care vary from individual to individual. In today’s world of cut-throat competition, it is the service that matters to all the customers and it has direct reciprocation on the long term sustainability and success of any business.
Be it in any field of industry or product, the customers are undoubtedly the centre of importance. Without their affinity for the product or service, the multi-dimensional growth of the industry or the service provider would be a topic out of the proximity. This certainly points out the need for giving the customers more than what they expect. In other word, to stand out in the competition, new schemes and products should be introduced in a way to delight the customers apart from catering to the conventional taste of service value. Beautiful architectural outlook, lavish interior , clean place , comfortable chairs , good air conditioning and smartly dressed staff to serve the customers are not enough to make an indelible impression on the customers. Focus should be on the feeling of belonging, responsibility, willingness and great respect while presenting oneself to the customers. Thus going out of the box or your comfort zone and serving the customers in order to win them emotionally and retain their loyalty is what everyone would desire.
For an instance, when I was working as a Supervisor in remittance department of a bank, two foreigners came to the counter to take cash advance from the credit card. They filled up the form and submitted the passport and the card for us to keep the copies of the same. While checking the form and the documents, I found that the name on the card and the passport were different. I immediately pointed this out and inquired whose card it was. The hesitant foreigner said it was her friend’s card who was sitting in the car parked in the bank’s premises. I asked the lady to get her friend’s passport and to bring her along to the counter. She brought the passport only and said that her friend would not be able to make it to the counter as she was a disabled and was on wheel chair. I had the form filled out as requested and sent my subordinate to the vehicle to have the signature of the handicapped foreigner. As it was raining heavily outside, my teller came almost fully drenched. After we obtained authorization for the mentioned amount , I had the cash ready. And along with the passport and the cash advance form I went out in the rain to visit the special guest waiting in a vehicle in the bank’s parking. I had her sign the acknowledgment of the receipt and handed over the money , her card and the passport. After our transaction was complete, the lady thanked me with a shaky voice and was almost in tears. That was indeed the tears of joy as she had not expected that she would be served by us at her very seat far away from the bank counter. Tell me who in this world would not be delighted with the service of this kind.
Further , to head an extra mile to serve the customers to their delight, every business organization frequented by customers should, without fail, consider the emotional values of the customers with great care. Every staff dealing with the customers should be well groomed to inculcate the habit of dealing with the best presentable manner to win customers’ appreciation. For instance a simple thing like greeting the customers with smile, promptly attending and guiding them with politeness and listening to customer’s complaint/problem with devoted concern for immediate resolution and not discriminating any individual in showing respect, irrespective of their class or social status, are some of the extra services of humanitarian values which are priceless and shall leave an indelible impression on customers.
Let me remind you a lady who had come for two week’s tour to Nepal under the arrangement of a reputed travel agency. The lady had verbally booked the same travel to provide airport transfer at the time of her departure. So on the day of the departure, the Tour Officer of the travel agency went to pick her up from the hotel. Soon after the Tour Officer met the lady and greeted, she began to weep. The Tour Officer was surprised and asked her the reason for crying. The foreigner finally disclosed that she did not have any money to pay for the transfer and was a few hundred short to pay the airport tax. The Tour Officer immediately informed his manager about the situation and arranged not only to drop the tourist at the airport but also contributed a few hundred rupees to pay her airport tax. The tactful Tour Officer in this case did something extra which was nowhere in the itinerary of the tourist. Eventually, this act of extra service did pay off handsomely when the same lady came to Nepal the following year with a large group and bought the tour and trekking packages from the same travel agency .
To scale greater heights of service excellence , the role of time factor as an integral ingredient of any service standard, cannot be simply written off. You or me or anyone would value our time and want service very fast, if possible within a wink of an eye. Similarly, customers applying for loans in financial organizations want quick sanction of their loans. They would not like to stand long in queues to buy tickets to the theatre or encash a cheque at bank counters. They hate delay of reimbursement by insurance upon claim. Thus, to enhance service excellence, businesses should delve into the innovative possibilities of reducing the turn around time of the services involving long drawn formalities for prompt delivery of the service to the customers.
Since it is the customers who happen to dwell in the hearts of every business, reengineering of conventional business practices and undertaking innovation in the field of customer services. Customers’ delight is the utmost importance for strong sustainability of any business.
(Thapa retired recently from banking service where he was mostly involved in the credit card business)
