Se deroga

Business

n the monsoon of 2008, I was made Chief Belief Officer of the Future Group. The idea behind this unusual designation was de-liberate and simple: to startle people and make them see the critical role of belief in business.

There was the risk of being mistaken for a pastor, a guru or a priest, for many equate belief with religion and spirituality. Some were even convinced that my role was that of an evangelist or a propagandist: to help the organization manipulate the beliefs of em-ployees and customers until they were more enterprise-friendly.

My job, however, was to neither judge nor change beliefs; it was simply to articulate them. The intention was to expand the mind of those involved in business so that they could see the misalignment between busi-ness practices (that they blindly followed) and the beliefs of people (that they remained oblivious to). When the mind is expanded, we are able to see more frameworks, under-stand the world better, take better decisions, ones that ensure a viable, sustainable and happy business.

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The 3B Framework

Belief is subjective truth, my truth and your truth, the lens through which we make sense of the world.

Animals do not have beliefs. Animals want to know if the other is food, a mate or a threat. Humans, however, are consumed with notions of what is true (satyam, in Sanskrit), good (shivam) and beautiful (sundaram). Belief establishes these. Belief enables us to qualify people as heroes, vil-lains and victims. Everyone believes their subjective truth to be the objective truth, and clings to it firmly, as it determines their self-image and their self-worth.

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Belief plays a key role in business: it de-termines choices and propels the decisions of buyers and sellers, regulators and sharehold-ers, investors and entrepreneurs, employers and employees, vendors and customers. It determines how we do business, and what ultimately gets done.

As is belief, so is behaviour, so is busi-ness. This is Business Sutra. We can call it the 3B framework. Sutra is a string that con-nects the dots; here the string concon-nects belief with business.

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Management science, however, steers clear of belief. A child of the scientific revolu-tion and the industrial era, it shuns the in-tangible, subjective and non-measurable. It pays greater value to objectivity. Hence, greater attention is paid to institutional val-ues, arrived at by a team through consensus following a logical process. These belong to no one but every constituent member of the institution is contractually obliged to adhere to them, even at the cost of personal beliefs, at least during office hours. Organizational values are mapped to particular behaviours:

the assumption is that certain behaviours re-flect certain beliefs. This assumption allows

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the pretender to thrive in corporations, for as long as you are polite or mindful of protocol and respectful of rules, no one really cares what you feel or think. Belief may express it-self in behaviour, but the reverse may not be true. Respect (intangible belief ) may mani-fest in politeness (tangible behaviour), but politeness may not always reflect respect.

When corporations speak of growth, they speak of institutional growth not individual growth. And growth is always seen in terms of accumulation of wealth or equity or skills, never in terms of emotion or intellect. By do-ing so the corporation invalidates the

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personal, celebrates the professional, and creates the divide between work and life.

This is what dehumanizes corporations, and is the root cause of many of the problems fa-cing organizations today: from lack of initiat-ive and lack of ownership to the lack of eth-ics. Failure to recognize this is the greatest shortcoming of modern management studies.

Despite the veneer of objectivity and lo-gic, management science is itself firmly rooted in a cultural truth, the subjective truth of the West, indicated by its obsession with goals. Targets come first, then tasks, then people. The value placed on vision, mis-sion, objectives, milestones, targets and tasks in modern business practice resonates with the Greek quest for Elysium, the heaven of heroes, and the biblical quest for the Promised Land, paradise of the faithful.

This is not surprising as the purveyors of management science are mostly engineers,

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bankers and soldiers from twentieth century North America, which is deeply entrenched in the Protestant work ethic, a unique blend of Greek and biblical beliefs. And like all be-lievers, they are convinced that goal-orienta-tion is logical, hence the universal solugoal-orienta-tion to all business problems. But it is not so. In fact, there are cultures, like India, where this goal-orientation is seen as a problem, not a solution.

This is obvious to any student of mytho-logy. But who studies mythology in a world where most managers are engineers?

Belief, Myth and Mythology

Belief is the seed from which sprouts every human enterprise, every culture, every act of human kindness and cruelty. Every belief is irrational and hence a myth. Therefore, the study of stories, symbols and rituals to de-code the beliefs they communicate is called

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mythology. There are secular mythologies in the world, such as the stories, symbols and rituals of a nation state, or a corporation, as well as religious mythologies.

For the believer, his belief is objective truth; he therefore rejects the notion of myth, and shuns the subject of mythology, a key reason why belief remains an invisible unacknowledged lever in modern business practices. We convince ourselves that our be-liefs are rational hence right, while those of others are irrational, hence wrong.

To have beliefs, we need imagination.

Imagination springs from the neo-frontal cortex, or the enlarged part of the brain that is located behind the forehead. This exists only in human beings. Some animals, like the dolphin and the chimpanzee, may ima-gine, but nothing on the scale that humans can.

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It comes as a surprise to most people that the imagination is a neurobiological function specific to the human species, not a

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universal phenomenon. It means accepting that every human being inhabits his own customized personalized subjective version of reality that no one else has access to.

Every animal looks at the world ently but the human gaze is especially differ-ent because the reality of nature is being constantly compared and contrasted with imaginary reality inside the head. We can control the subjective world in our head but not the objective one outside. This leads to conflict as the imagination seeks a world that is much more controllable, hence delightful.

Conflict is further amplified because every other human we encounter has their own version of imagined reality and each person is convinced that their imagined real-ity is the ‘correct’ version of realreal-ity. What is true then? This brings about awareness of the self (my view versus the view of others), and the need for language, creativity and

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reason (to communicate my view and con-vince others of my view).

Humans have the ability to control fire, water, plants as well as animals, something that no other living organism can do. But we struggle to control the human mind: our mind as well as the mind of those around us.

Control makes us feel powerful; lack of con-trol makes us feel powerless. And so we are left to wonder: what is the purpose of our abilities, who are we, and what happens after death? Nature offers no answers. We only have our beliefs to guide us, structure our lives, give it meaning, and direction. Most people follow beliefs prescribed by others; a few design their own. As we agree upon what life can be or should be, we are driven to work, establish businesses, create civiliza-tions and leave behind legacies.

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Decoding Culture

There was once a priest who was very poor, there were constant quarrels in his house between his unhappy wife, his hungry chil-dren and his helpless parents. He begged the deity of his temple to help. So the deity gave him a pot of gold. The happy priest sold the gold and used the money to repay his debts, bought all the things money could buy, and even made investments to secure his future.

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But soon after the quarrels started again:

between his greedy wife, his ambitious chil-dren and his neglected parents. Each one wanted a greater share of the treasure. An-noyed, the priest went to the deity and de-manded a solution. Once again the deity gave him a pot of gold. “No, I don’t want another pot of gold. Give me something that solves the problem truly,” cried the priest. “Pot of gold!” exclaimed the deity, “But I never gave you a pot of gold. I gave you the nectar of wisdom. Did you not drink it? Or were you too distracted by the container?”

Stories, symbols and rituals that define a culture, even business practices that shape an organization, make up the pot of gold that we all engage with; contained within it is be-lief in the culture that makes us see the world in a particular way. It is often overlooked.

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Every belief expresses itself in the stories we tell, the symbols we create, and the rituals we follow. Stories, symbols and rituals create culture. Culture in turn shapes the beliefs of those who inhabit it. Thus, from nature comes imagination, from imagination comes subjectivity and from subjectivity comes be-lief, from belief comes culture and from cul-ture springs forth humanity.

American stories, symbols and rituals re-veal American beliefs. Indian stories, sym-bols and rituals reveal Indian beliefs.

Modern stories, symbols and rituals reveal modern beliefs. Tribal stories, symbols and

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rituals reveal tribal beliefs. Organizational stories, symbols and rituals reveal organiza-tional beliefs. Religious stories, symbols and rituals reveal religious beliefs. Secular stor-ies, symbols and rituals reveal secular beliefs.

The uniqueness of a culture’s music, art, architecture, food and fashion is an expres-sion of that culture’s unique beliefs. The di-versity of cultures around the world indicates

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diversity of beliefs, hence plurality of human thought. Mythology involves studying these stories, symbols and rituals (the codes) and decoding the underlying patterns of thought.

It reveals that different communities think differently and so approach life very differ-ently. It reveals that management science is rooted in Western beliefs and indifferent to Indian or Chinese beliefs.

Myth got a bad name, and rationality got a good name, because of the scientific re-volution of the sixteenth century, according to which only that which is rational is real and relevant. The word was used to dismiss ideas of every culture other than European.

European ideas were assumed to be rational, hence not mythic. This has naturally put oth-er cultures on the defensive. Nobody wants to be associated with myth, hence falsehood.

Myth has since been positioned as being the opposite of the truth. Unfortunately, in the West, truth is claimed on one hand by

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scientists and on the other hand by religious authorities. There is much debate even today between the theists and atheists. Academi-cians and scientists have legitimized this fight by joining in. This fight has been appro-priated by most societies in the world that seek to be modern.

But the divide between myth and truth, between religious truth and scientific truth, this rabid quest for the absolute and perfect truth is a purely Western phenomenon. It would not have bothered the intellectuals of ancient China who saw such activities as speculative indulgence. Ancient Indian sages would have been wary of it for they looked upon the quest for the objective and absolute as the root cause of intolerance and violence.

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The ‘modern era’ that flourished after the scientific revolution of Europe mocked the ‘pre-modern era’ that did not challenge irrational ideas propagated by religious and royal authorities.

In the second half of the twentieth cen-tury, people started observing that rational ideas propagated by modern scientists, espe-cially social scientists, in the realm of eco-nomics, politics, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, arts, religious and cultural stud-ies, were also steeped in prejudice. The lan-guage used to express ideas harboured cul-tural ideas: innocuous words like ‘evolution’

and ‘development’ revealed a belief that the

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world had, or should have, a purpose, a dir-ection, and a movement towards betterment.

Capitalism and Communism were decon-structed to reveal roots in the Greek epics or the Bible as they spoke of individualistic her-oes and martyrdom for the greater social good. This discovery gave birth to the ‘post-modern era’. Modern ideas may not be reli-gious, but that did not make them universal truths; they were as rooted in cultural beliefs as the superstitions of yore.

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But there was a problem with the post-modern revolution. It implicitly suggested that everything was up for interpretation, there was no correct decoding, and no view could be criticized, as everything was sub-jective. Judgment of any kind was bad; any

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form of evaluation was prejudice. The era of remixes was born. Ravan could be wor-shipped and Ram reviled, invalidating the traditional adoration of Ram in hundreds of temples over hundreds of years. Images of Santa on a crucifix could be used to evoke the Christmas spirit.

Another problem with the postmodern lens is that the authors are typically critical of the authoritarian and manipulative gaze but are indifferent to their own gaze, which is often equally authoritarian and manipulat-ive. Deconstruction of the Other is rarely ac-companied by deconstruction of the self.

Today people speak of ‘post-postmod-ernism’. It means looking at beliefs from the point of view of the believer. It demands em-pathy and less judgment, something that is in short supply in academia today, as it is de-signed to argue and dismiss ideas in its quest for the objective truth.

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Connecting Mythology and Management

I discovered my love for mythology while studying in Grand Medical College, Mumbai.

After my graduation, I chose to work in the medical industry, rather than take up clinical practice, to give myself the time and funds for my passion. So I lived in two worlds:

weekdays in the pharmaceutical and health-care industry and weekends with mytholo-gies from all over the world.

In my professional capacity, I was first a content vendor, then a manager at Good-healthnyou.com, Apollo Health Street and Sanofi Aventis, and finally, a business ad-viser at Ernst Young. In a personal capacity, I conducted workshops as part of Sabrang, an organization dedicated to demystifying the arts, started by the late Parag Trivedi.

Conversations with him, and other members of the Sabrang gang, revealed a gap between

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Hindustani melody and Western harmony, the value of facial expressions in Indian clas-sical dance and the relative absence of the same in Japanese theatre, ballet and modern American dance, the intense arguments of European philosophers on the nature of the truth and the reason why Indian, or Chinese, philosophers were excluded from these argu-ments. Shifts in patterns I had seen in stor-ies, symbols and rituals, were now apparent in music, dance, architecture, and philosophy.

I never studied management formally though I grew up listening to stories of sales and marketing from my father who did his MBA from New York University in 1960, long before it became fashionable in India (IIM itself was founded in 1961). One of his teachers was the famous Peter Drucker. My father returned to work in the private sector in India at the height of the licence raj. He

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always spoke of trust, relationships and re-spect, rather than processes and control.

I did do a formal postgraduate diploma course in comparative mythology from Mumbai University, but it was too rudiment-ary for my liking. I delved into the literature written around the subject ( Myth by Lawrence Coupe, for example) and realized that mythology demanded forging links with literature, language, semiotics, the occult, mysticism, anthropology, sociology, philo-sophy, religion, history, geography, business, economics, politics, psychology, physics, bio-logy, natural history, archaeobio-logy, botany, zoology, critical thinking, and the arts.

Courses offered by universities abroad, on the other hand, were not inter-disciplinary enough. Self-study was the only recourse.

The more I explored mythology, the more I felt like Aladdin in a cave of undis-covered treasures. Every day I learned something that took me by surprise. I

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realized how mythology tends to be read lit-erally, causing it to be seen through a soci-ological and historical lens (did Ram exist?) when, in fact, its greatest value comes when it is read symbolically and seen in psycholo-gical terms (what aspect of our personality does Ram represent?).

As my mind exploded with new ideas, I wondered if they were true. And this lead to the unearthing of various theories on truth that helped me understand myth even better.

It exposed the gap between neuroscience and psychoanalysis and the discomfort of scient-ists with the idea of imagination. It also re-vealed how the truth of the East is always studied in Western terms, rarely has the truth of the West been studied in Eastern terms. If it has, it has been dismissed as exotic, even quaint.

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For a long time, management and myth-ology were parallel rivers in my life, uncon-nected with each other. Things began to change when I became increasingly sensitive to the problems plaguing corporations: the power play between sales and marketing, the need as well as threat of unions, the burden of templates, the cultural insensitivity of multinational advertising, the lack of inter-departmental empathy, the pretence of teamwork, the tyranny of technology, the feudal mindset beneath institutional veneers, the horrors of mergers and acquisitions, the

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deceptiveness of valuations, and the harsh reality of balance sheets.

I was fortunate that early in my career I interacted with Dr. Giri Shankar and his wife, Shailaja, who came from a strong beha-vioural science background, which is the cornerstone of many human resource prac-tices in the business world. The frameworks they provided explained and helped resolve many of the issues I saw and faced. But our intense and illuminating conversations kept telling me that something was missing. I found the subject too rational, too linear and too neat. Then it dawned on me that both management science and behavioural sci-ence have originated in American and European universities and are based on a Western template. Practitioners of behavi-oural science use questionnaires to map the mind in objective mathematical terms but the subject itself springs from Jungian psy-choanalysis and the notion of archetypes,

I was fortunate that early in my career I interacted with Dr. Giri Shankar and his wife, Shailaja, who came from a strong beha-vioural science background, which is the cornerstone of many human resource prac-tices in the business world. The frameworks they provided explained and helped resolve many of the issues I saw and faced. But our intense and illuminating conversations kept telling me that something was missing. I found the subject too rational, too linear and too neat. Then it dawned on me that both management science and behavioural sci-ence have originated in American and European universities and are based on a Western template. Practitioners of behavi-oural science use questionnaires to map the mind in objective mathematical terms but the subject itself springs from Jungian psy-choanalysis and the notion of archetypes,