Aptness Of Ramayana To Corporate World

The great “Ramayana” teaches us three-Fold Dharma (code of conduct to lead a disciplined life) for an individual, the family, and overall society. Ramayana has always been a very constitutive part of our lives. It is a never-ending, one of the most interesting, thrilling and educative stories of Rama, Sita & the Ram Rajya. There can be many interpretations of Rama & Sita’s life, but significantly every single one of them concludes that Rama left Sita. Well, to a common mind, It is hard to understand why would Rama leave her merely because of a suspicion raised on Sita’s character by a washerman (dhobi). 

The great Ramayana is an ‘Epic” authored by a wise saint, who has successfully captured the human life-cycle and also provided a powerful insight to the human kind, to follow the life path with wise thinking. It teaches us leadership, management, and governance.

According to the ‘Valmiki Ramayana’ Lord Rama, the ‘Dharm Purush’ got influenced of what he overheard from the Dhobi, and without verifying took the dastardly decision of sheering his relations with his wife Sita. This is what is happening in today’s corporate world, which is full of such ‘Dhobis’ sitting at various levels, especially the mid-level management, spreading targeted and inaccurate rumours and influencing the senior level management. They are wolves in the garb of sheep, narcissistic people, who just think about their gains and losses and do not care about others or the company they are working for. Here is a lesson for the upper-level management, the employees are the heart and soul of any big or small company, and they are committed to the well-being of their company. No inappropriate wave of negativity should be created against anyone, unless the rumour or gossip being milled by some ‘Dhobi’ is thoroughly verified. 

Leadership and business are intertwined, they complete each other. A leader is one who enriches with knowledge from learnings of various disciplines. The great Ramayana is one such source, its learnings reflect in the working of ‘corporates’. No doubt,  one can comprehend many corporate lessons from it and apply them consciously, in the business world. Some takeaways are:

• Attrition: Anyone who joins an organisation would leave it someday, that’s an understanding universally, but if this happens untimely or if the number of people leaving the organisation is high, then it’s a matter of concern and the management should retrospect to understand the reason for disassociation by the employees. Had King ‘Ravana’ taken a moment to assess the pot boiling in his backyard, he could have saved his kingdom. He failed to measure the dissent in his own brother ‘Vibhishana’ who played a detrimental role in pulling down the Lanka Kingdom and identifying timely the reasons behind his doing so.
• SWOT: The SWOT - Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats is not only a fancy word, but is an important tool of modern day management for analysing people. Significance can be given to the episode of Ramayana in which a thorough analysis of Lanka is undertaken by ‘Veer Hanuman’ before going into full-scale war. He did SWOT analysis when he entered Lanka on the pretext of finding Mata Sita.
• Subordinate (mid-level soldier) – Ideally, management guys should be equipped with the skills and patience to have two-way communication and understanding of the psychology of their subordinates. A subordinate is a spine of any organisation and he should be felt ‘wanted’, only then he/she will give their best to the organisation. Quote unquote, see the example of ‘Demon King Ravana’ who lost his kingdom because of lack of these skills or over-confidence, he did not take advice of his subordinates or kept them in confidence. 
• Belief in team (management) – An ambitious management throws challenges and sets ambitious goals in order to motivate the team to achieve and excel. This creates a sense of valour, jubilations as well as creates comradery amongst the team members. To understand this from the purview of Ramayana one should remember the conversation between ‘Bear King Jamvant’ and Veer Hanuman. An example of coaxing and motivation, he made him realise his potential. The results are apparent. 

To me, the great ‘Ramayana’ is full of deep knowledge on Leadership, skills of management and good governance. It provides clarity of vision and opinion on creating strength of ethics, code of conducts to the management. It shows the way to make them realise the importance of interaction and building good relations with subordinates. Down the path, it serves as a guiding spirit to people who are not sitting at the level of management but are as important as management, have faith in their abilities and achieve the threshold of their potentials. 

We have taken the lessons from religion to lead our lives individually, as part of the family and society. Simultaneously it also provides a clear message that its learnings are equally applicable to the ‘workplace’, which is nonetheless an extension to our homes today.