Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Buddhism and management? Gimme a break...

It had to happen and it has. After the Gita and management and lessons in leadership from Gandhi, Buddhism and management could not have been far off. Schumpeter reports that the Buddhist focus on "mindfulness" is gaining adherents in the management fraternity.

It is not entirely correct to suggest that "mindfulness" is a unique Buddhist contribution. 'Know thyself' is prescribed in the Hindu scriptures and, perhaps, other scriptures as well. The Buddha did emphasise the importance of "awareness"; J Krishnamurthi, the famous Indian guru, spoke of "choiceless awareness". The broad idea is that by simply watching the flow of one's thoughts, by being aware of one's surroundings, one can gain a better understanding of oneself.

What does this have to do with management, especially with producing better results? Self-awareness, no doubt, makes for better relationships. It may also contribute to a certain equanimity which helps one cope with the daily stresses of a managerial position.

The problem arises when one views awareness not as an end in itself but as a means to producing better results or, bluntly, higher profits. Relating religious or spiritual injunctions to commercial performance is a bad idea. It could well be that heightened awareness makes one question what is going inside one's company. It may mean questioning things going in society at large. It may mean having to challenge the assumptions on which business is built. This sort of questioning, which is a whole-hearted questioning that arises from deep awareness, could end up being inimical to business performance. Such performance, you could say, depends at least partly on your being blind to many things that are going on around you.

Business performance may have very little to do with spiritual development. On the contrary, it may call for a degree of ruthlessness and disregard for values that are contrary to the tenets of religion and spirituality. Mixing the two may well cause those in managerial jobs to fall between two stools- they mess up performance and they mess up their inner worlds as well. Schumpeter ends up posing the right questions:

The biggest problem with mindfulness is that it is becoming part of the self-help movement—and hence part of the disease that it is supposed to cure. Gurus talk about “the competitive advantage of meditation”. Pupils come to see it as a way to get ahead in life. And the point of the whole exercise is lost. What has parading around in pricey lululemon outfits got to do with the Buddhist ethic of non-attachment to material goods? And what has staring at a computer-generated dot got to do with the ancient art of meditation?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Isn't it a paradox that meditation & spirituality are meant to de-link oneself from materiality (money & stuff). But people approach it to excel themselves in the money game (business).

But isn't this also a paradox - Laxmi (Goddess of wealth) sits besides Vasudev (Genesis of Spiritual knowledge). How do we explain this ?

Santosh Sali said...

Wonderful discussion, I think that is not the idea behind bring "Mindfulness" or for that matter "Spirituality" to the Mainstream business or management. Idea is how do you still excel at the work being done ? How do you "detach" yourself from the "consequences" of work and still continue working towards your goals. For example if we take a case of Kejariwal - whether he succeeds or fails at the goals of eradicating corruption. How he continues his fight. I think that explains why Laxmi is sitting next to Vasudev (A metaphor in Vishunsaharsanama that be "mindful" even though a Laxmi at your feet, you are sitting on Shesha etc. ) ..
A wonderful post and comment, I am posting this in other group for further thought on this...

chandramouli said...

Practical experience says it is totally wrong to find any positive relationship between business performance and spiritual development. When we were young we had our minds set on only our career advancement by achieving business performance without any inclination towards spirituality. The generation before us had relaxed on spirituality and we could, through our aggressiveness and competitiveness, out-perform them and could dominate. Man tends to think of spirituality only after having obtained sufficient material wealth. Similarly, in the case of my generation, having achieved some amount of well-being, when it tended to relax by adopting spiritualism, the next generation, through the explosion of science and technology, competitive spirit devoid of spiritual leanings out-maneuvered our generation in business performance. The competitive generation comes one after the other and spiritualism is the method through which one generation hands over mantle to other generation as spiritualism teaches one to accept defeat with grace. So spiritualism comes into play where business performance ends. They are mutually exclusive.

Anonymous said...

Many in Business World and other Managers have been doing Vipassana, a practice taught by Gautama the Buddha. I saw Subhash Chandra myself; and I know Anu Agha, kiran Bedi, Arvind Kejriwal as Practitioners.