Time to upgrade our software

Over the last few years, the world has witnessed unprecedented crises at multiple levels--- financially, environmentally, politically and socially. Many a finger has been pointed to the collective failure of leadership in institutions, particularly organizations and business schools across the globe. Over the years greed for profits and benefits at any cost has clearly compounded to result in the recent financial meltdown. With rapid strides in technology and communication, the world has not only become flatter but also woven into an intricate interdependent web. So organizations today can ill afford to be blind to other stake holders while fulfilling their purpose of business. There is an urgent need to shift one’s focus from being purely shareholder and investor driven to a multi stakeholder one, in which the society ranks foremost. The book, ‘Firms of Endearment: How world class companies profit from passion and purpose, 2007, Sisodia, Sheth, and Wolfe’ details how companies that followed the latter outperformed the ‘Good to Great’ (Jack Collins) companies, 3:1 over a 10 year period. Quite interestingly these companies were even able to deliver consistently over a 3 year period, indicating their propensity to deliver on long term sustainable success.

So while there is a critical need for organizations to relook at their ways of doing business, a shift in thinking also needs to happen at business schools. Are they doing enough in shaping management graduates with a mindset of seeing the larger integrated picture while sourcing from sterling qualities of authenticity and humility? American business schools trained many of the people who had their hands on the tiller when the nation's economic ship ran aground. Having plunged the world into a crisis of several ramifications; heads of top business schools were found asking themselves the degree of responsibility they bear. “That basic model — the fundamental model, which really made up the fabric of contemporary business education, has to be revisited," says Rakesh Khurana, a professor at Harvard. He believes that “business schools have drifted away from their original mission: to create a true management profession for the benefit of society, rather than churn out consultants and hedge-fund hot shots.”

The crises caused by gaps in leadership ability leads one to wonder whether our existing approach to developing our leaders be it at business schools or organizations; is adequate? For disasters of such nature to be pre empted one needs to adopt a new paradigm altogether. It’s not as if organizations and business schools have not been on a soul searching mode to find a fix. When the dot-com bubble burst schools were quick to add a course on business ethics. Organizations too have invested considerably and continue to do so, in training programs on values and attitudes. However none of these did help to avoid the economic fallout in 2008-09! 

So while an effort to shift mindsets and behavior patterns in being made, it hasn’t really shifted the human capacity (and therefore leadership effectiveness) to a higher order. They have merely scratched the surface without making a deep and sustainable impact.

The challenges of the outside world is compelling us to look within—our inner space of who we are. It calls for an alignment of our inner thoughts and feelings associated with it. The more we understand and expand this part of ourselves the greater will be the adeptness with which we respond to our circumstances. There seems to be a direct and a potent connection between who we are on the inside and what we do on the outside. In effect our state of ‘being’ has a direct bearing on our state of ‘doing.’ Our inability to respond effectively to the world around us implies that somewhere we are not sourcing completely from this part of ourselves. It’s important to question if courses on ethics and trainings on values have truly triggered the change in thought, feeling and action that we have been seeking? Is a mere intellectual understanding of “the right thing to do” enough to warrant a meaningful change in an individual?

Nebulous as it may sound; our inner world is like the powerful ‘Intel processor’ waiting for an upgrade to be able to run those snazzy applications and packages that are subsequently loaded on it.

The journey of understanding the ‘inner self’ may be a slow one requiring sustained effort and will.

The questions we need to ask ourselves are—

·         Are we willing to traverse this path of self discovery?

·         Are organizations and business schools ready to invest in nurturing this part of ourselves?