THE YOGA OF MANAGEMENT
Swami Bodhananda
The Sambodh Society
Inc. USA, and
Sambodh Centre for
Human Excellence
Kalamazoo, Michigan
Management is the
science of optimal utilization of material resources for human satisfaction.
Yoga is the discipline of organizing human resources for individual fulfilment.
A healthy individual, well integrated in body-mind-spirit, alone can contribute
maximally to teamwork, and pursue excellence. Yoga and management are
interchangeable words.
The discipline of
management started with managing physical resources and moved on to
incorporating management of financial assets and finally to encompass
management of human potential. Change, innovation and productivity are critical
factors in the present knowledge driven economy and all those are directly
connected with individual human beings.
The central challenge
that corporate management faces today is motivating individual workers to cope
with changes brought by global competition, technological innovations and
changing human needs and aspirations. These days, in an ever changing, complex,
connected, flat world, all types of organizations, not just business, but
political, religious, service and philanthropic are run on corporate models.
Individuals as
workers and consumers are the main focus of management. Yoga discipline
helps the individual become a better worker with flexible and healthy body,
balanced mind, sharp intellect, and well rooted in the spirit. Self-sufficient
and self inspired individuals alone can become quick learners and better team
players. If efficiency is mastery of a set of technical skills, effectiveness
is mastery of one’s emotions and sensitivity to other’s feelings and needs.
Daniel Goleman named it ‘emotional intelligence’ and Bhagavan Krishna termed it
‘samatva buddhi’ ( B.Gita: 2-48). Patanjali defined yoga as management of
mind, ‘chittavritti nirodha’(YS: 1-2).
Ultimately,
management deals with human emotions. Though economists base their
theories on the assumption that man is a rational choice maker, hardly any
decision is made purely on rational grounds. Almost all human decisions,
especially in crisis situations, are influenced by emotions. Run on
banks, panic buying and selling of shares and emergency shopping for groceries
are some instances of emotional decisions based on fear and anxiety.
Emotions created by somatic conditions and innate tendencies in turn
determine intellectual activities, physical actions and social events.
Patanjali’s concept of ‘chitta vritti’ or cognition is a conjoined product of
memories, emotions and sensations — what
phenomenologists call ‘embodied action’.
Over and beyond hard
skills management emphasizes the soft skills for successful work performance.
Those skills are -- empathy, clarity, character, punctuality, team spirit,
integrity, imagination, passion, communication, decisiveness, firmness,
humility and courage. But according to Patanjali the most important skill in managing
emotions and relationship is ‘detached focus’ or ‘samyama’(YS: 3-4)
Detached focus is
accessing diverse factors while focused on the task at hand. This also means
accessing the spiritual energy while focused on work and relationship. Thus
detached focus works bi-directionally. According to Patanjali ‘samyama’ is the
cumulative effect of ‘dharana’ — concentration , ‘dhyanam’ — application, and ‘samadhi’
— mastery (Y.S: 3-1,2,3). The practitioner becomes a virtuoso in the particular
domain of choice. Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita introduces three stages of
development beginning from ‘kausalam’ — efficiency, ‘samatvam’ — effectiveness
and ‘samadhi’ — fulfilment (Bhagavad Gita: 2-48,50,53)
Self-confidence based
on self-knowledge is the key to management practice. There are two levels
of self — the empirical, that is, ‘prakriti’ and, the transcendental, that is,
‘purusha’ (B.Gita: 13-19). The empirical includes the complex of memories,
emotions, desires, thoughts and states of egos, and the transcendental is the
witnessing pure consciousness. According to Yogic intuition, consciousness is
bliss and is eternal. The manager managing people and scarce resources has to
function without losing touch with the consciousness dimension of embodiment.
Detached focus, ‘samyama’, means this Yogic skill.
The ultimate purpose
of management is the satisfaction of a healthy, well integrated individual.
Profit, market share, GDP and per capita income are poor indicators of human
satisfaction. The production of goods and services has to factor environmental
and health aspects as inputs. The health and safety of the consumer and the environment
should be uppermost in the producer’s mind. I would call it ‘ethical production’
and ‘green products’. Similarly the safety and health of the worker is of
paramount consideration. Worker is no more considered as hands and head but as organically
whole persons. Consumers are not just addictive gluttons, unconsciously
indulging in appetites injurious to health. The separation of producer from the
consumer creates room for greed and malpractices. If producers consume their
own products then there will be significantly less dissatisfaction and
exploitation. This does not mean that man is incapable of self-destructive
activities, like making drugs, liquor and tobacco for self consumption. But
they are individual aberrations and not upscale multinational corporate
activities.
Yoga
advocates ‘aparigraham’ and ‘asteyam’( YS: 2-30), sharing and austere living as
solutions to greed and exploitation of resources for personal pelf and power.
And the reward is mental peace, health, inner strength and social harmony.
Modern economy is based on trade, increasing the distance and decreasing the
time between producer and consumer. As a result mindless exploitation of
natural and human resources happen robbing nature and humans their essence and
vitality. In the process all are losers — the exploiter and exploited, the
producer and consumer, the buyer and seller. By sharing resources and by
austere living the individual and community grow in wisdom and wellbeing. The
new metrics of prosperity are human development index and gross human
happiness. Yoga puts economics upside down from consumption to conservation.
The
Yogi-manager is a well-balanced individual possessing cognitive, emotional and
spiritual intelligence and is conscious of human embeddedness in nature and
culture. Yogi-manager is a hands to mouth person, a Gandhian, for whom
production and consumption is a seamless experience. In this world of division
of labour, specialization, mass production, complex supply chains, rapid
transport and communication networks, a simple product as a pin or a chip is
result of the intersection of multitudinous coordinates involving the whole
planet and its billions of people. No amount of data or analytical tools can
possibly grasp the entirety of this snarled and chaotic complexity.
Practice of ‘aparigraham’
develops insight, foresight, far-sight and direct intuitive knowledge of
chaotic complexity. Patanjali calls it ‘janma kathamta sambodha’ (Y.S-2-39),
that is, the knowledge of birth, nature , function, relationship and death of
things--which means that the Yogi develops a thousand eyes that sees through
complexity that analytical reason cannot fathom. Yogi-manager’s embodiment
encompasses the entire ecosystem. By expanding awareness Yogi combines the
producer and consumer in lived embodiment without compromising complexity. Yogi-manager
is a cosmic hand to mouth person.
As individual becomes
more self-sufficient and families and communities take on more and more
economic activities, the power of nation states and corporations will decline
and cities will grow more diffused and diversified — a network without dominant
power centers. Monolithic corporations themselves will become diffused and
center-less networks. Yoga celebrates diversity as ‘purushas’ are unique and
many. Managing diversity and creating satisfaction for the worker-consumer will
be the central management challenge of the future. Hence manger has to become
invisible, just a space where a million flowers can bloom. Yogi by practicing ‘samyama’
on collective embodiment becomes invisible (Y.S-3-20), a silent space for
others to discover their potential. Yogi-manager is mainly a facilitator.
Yogi aspires for
capabilities like omniscience (Y.S: 3-16,17,18), invisibility(Y.S: 3-20),
thought reading (Y.S-3-19), levitation (Y.S: 3-38), entering into other’s body
(Y.S-3-37) etc. By practicing detached focus adept Yogi accomplishes all those
skills (siddhis). In a networked modern world decision making is a chaotic
operation. In fact no individual can either access or process all the data and
no decision is absolute or perfect. The whole decision making process is murky,
fluid and ambiguous. The Buddha is right in asserting that there is no soul, no
one center nor any fixed entity. By ‘samyama’, or detached focus the Yogi-manager
is able to master this chaotically evolving complexity. Yogi is the conscious
embodiment of the evolving cosmos. Yogi-manager is able to levitate, become
light, and enter into the body and mind of others, to empathise and factor the
aspirations and dreams of all stake holders. The fulfilment of all stakeholders
is a necessary condition for Yogi-manager’s fulfilment. Yogi-manager's embodiment is cosmic in
dimension.
‘Samyama’ or detached
focus is bidirectional. Its gaze falls equally on the self and the other
(purusha and prakriti). The linear binary problematic of zero sum game, of your
gain-is-my-loss syndrome, is alien to the Yogi spirit. The Yogi-manager is a
game changer and win-win player. There is no garbage, no nuclear waste, in the
yoga cyclical process — everything is recycled, everything is food or manure
for everything else. This is a case of the eaten eating the eater. The Yogi
in embodied action harnesses both the powers of the self and the world and
attains ‘samadhi’, bliss in dynamic relationships. Patanjali uses two
significant words to describe this dynamic state: ‘nirbija’ (Y.S: 1-51) and
‘kaivalya’ (Y.S: 4-34). Nirbija means that process which leaves no waste or
pollution, and kaivalya means that which has no trace of harmful toxic. Yogi-manager’s
decisions and actions are non-exploitative and do not invoke resistance. Yogi
has no enemies and has no enmity. Yogi-manager is truly nonviolent — ‘ahimsa
pratishtayam tatsannidhau vairya tyaga’ (Y.S: 2-35). Yogi is free from
violence because of cognisance of and empathy to the insecurities and fears of
others. Awareness of other’s insecurities makes the yogi compassionate, open
and fearless.
The ultimate test of
management is pollution and waste free production, distribution and
consumption, which is the state of ‘nirbija samadhi’. The Yogi-manager in
action is in ‘nirbija samadhi’.
Subhamastu
