Rethinking Enterprise Management

 

Several disruptions have come together to affect the efficacy of how enterprises are managed.

• Environment as a stakeholder: The effect of how enterprises function on the environment has become a big issue due to the adverse effects on climate.

• Cultural diversity: In an increasingly global marketplace, all the stakeholders are distributed globally - employees, customers, investors, suppliers, governments. Each of them have its own cultural values that need to be accommodated for harmonious co-existence.

• Loosely coupled workforce: Employee loyalty to a single company can no longer be taken for granted. Technology has enabled remote work and time-shared services for multiple enterprises at a time. This forces enterprises to rethink terms of engagement and IP protection.

• Broadening of stakeholder value: Wealth is no longer the only motivator for participation in an enterprise. Work-family balance, Intellectual satisfaction, community, ethical standpoint, national aspirations, environmental impact, all become important to various degrees for different stakeholders.
  

• Non-commercial enterprises: There is proliferation of enterprises without a profit motive. Examples include social, cultural, political and spiritual organisations for whom serving a cause is more important than financial self-sustenance. The needs of such organisations are not adequately covered by current MBA programs.
  

Enterprise management has evolved from managing a large pool of human robots to a dynamic peer-to-peer ecosystem of fully alive participants with their own multi-dimensional motives and interests. We are approaching the way nature itself operates and must adopt some of its time-tested strategies. At the core of these disruptions lies (i) a marked shift in the notion of stakeholder value beyond wealth, (ii) demand for flexibility and decentralization in decision making, (iii) need to accommodate participants with diverse aspirations and priorities.

To handle these disruptions effectively, we need a new paradigm of management that looks at stakeholders, their identities and aspirations more holistically. Management must evolve strategies for handling stakeholders as an ecosystem of peer living entities, and motivating them to work together to achieve larger causes, while fulfilling their individual aspirations. To achieve this, we need a comprehensive model of stakeholder behavior that captures their multidimensional personality and aspirations. We also need to model how individuals come together to bring an organisation alive.

How Vedic Wisdom contributes to Management

Vedic wisdom offers a comprehensive model of conscious life and its behavior. This model is inherently recursive / fractal and can be extended equally to organizations as well as individuals. In this model, both an individual as well as an organisation can be represented as having pancha koshas or 5 layers of personality with their own unique motives. This expanded view enables us to model a wide variety of enterprises, not just commercial. This includes social, cultural, political as well as spiritual organizations. Such a unified model offers a sound basis for reasoning about organizational behavior and offers a rich set of strategies to navigate diverse personalities. Since this model throws light on the inner springs of behavior, and makes managers more aware of them, we call the paradigm based on the Vedic model as Conscious Management.

Revamping Management Education

To train future managers to effectively navigate the challenges of modern enterprise, we have developed a novel management training program at masters' level that presents the larger context and the principles at work. We introduce the Conscious Management paradigm and its underlying Vedic model. We show how it offers new ways of problem solving. We then introduce the mainstream functional knowledge of management.

Can Machines take over Humans?

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) is getting more and more sophisticated, many jobs requiring decision making in ambiguous conditions are now possible by algorithms. Hence, artificial bots are replacing human workers. This is dramatically reducing the number of jobs in which humans are required. It is raising a fundamental question, what is the value a human can contribute which a machine cannot. Future jobs will be decided by that value.

The above is a layman's perception of the situation. A fundamental question arises, if technology advances as much as it could, how powerful can machines get relative to what a human can achieve. To understand this, we need to grasp what is the core capability that is leading to the ability to automate. 

Initial attempts of Artificial Intelligence tried to mimic the inferencing capabilities of humans. This failed miserably. The real breakthrough came with machine learning and its ability to identify patterns in past data. Initially these patterns were primitive. But with the advent of Convoluted Neural Networks (CNN) a.k.a. Deep Learning, the patterns became more sophisticated. Now we can identify recurrence of even patterns of inference. The fundamental capability is this: by capturing human behavior in large quantities a machine can identify recurrent behavior with a high accuracy. As a result a machine can learn from past patterns. The flip side is that the machine can only repeat the past but not compose new inferences. This limits creativity. So what humans can add is creative solutions that are not repetitions of past patterns.

To the extent a human action is a repetition from memory, whether individual or collective, a machine can replace. This forces humans to develop and rely more on intuition for decision making to stay ahead of machines.

According to Vedic wisdom a human is a collection of multiple nested personalities or identities called the koshas. The human experiences the world via these identities and stores the outcomes in a common memory called the chitta. He gives value to an experience by comparing it with stored experiences of various koshas in the chitta. His  reactions to the incoming shocks of the world are predominantly conditioned by the stored experiences. These stored experiences are called samskaras. Examples of samskaras: Muscle memory at the physical level, urge to defend ego at pranamaya kosha, instinct to protect family, prejudice to one's own ideas, and affinity to dharma. Human behavior is predictable to the extent it is determined by samskaras. This is what can be accurately modeled by machine learning.

What distinguishes a human from a machine is his sense of self, its experience and the joy resulting from it. The machine does not have any of these. All it has is the memory and the ability to search it for a  match. To the extent human inference of new facts from existing data follows a pattern, even a machine can mimic that. A machine cannot feel, but can process feelings as accurately as a human. This is because humans are predominantly memory-driven i.e. samskara-driven or habit-driven. 

True liberation (Moksha) is therefore liberation from bondage to the past. AI is hastening humanity towards liberation.

Sri Aurobindo on Panchakoshas

Here is an excerpt from Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine pp. 273-275 on the Psychological role of Panchakoshas and seven chakras.

Certainly, if that body, life and consciousness were limited to the possibilities of the gross body which are all that our physical senses and physical mentality accept, there would be a very narrow term for this evolution, and the human being could not hope to accomplish anything essentially greater than his present achievement. But this body, as ancient occult science discovered, is not the whole even of our physical being; this gross density is not all of our substance. The oldest Vedantic knowledge tells us of five degrees of our being, the material, the vital, the mental, the ideal, the spiritual or beatific and to each of these grades of our soul there corresponds a grade of our substance, a sheath as it was called in the ancient figurative language. A later psychology found that these five sheaths of our substance were the material of three bodies, gross physical, subtle and causal, in all of which the soul actually and simultaneously dwells, although here and now we are superficially conscious only of the material vehicle.

But it is possible to become conscious in our other bodies as well and it is in fact the opening up of the veil between them and consequently between our physical, psychical and ideal personalities which is the cause of those “psychic” and “occult” phenomena that are now beginning to be increasingly though yet too little and too clumsily examined, even while they are far too much exploited. The old Hathayogins and Tantriks of India had long ago reduced this matter of the higher human life and body to a science. They had discovered six nervous centres of life in the dense body corresponding to six centres of life and mind faculty in the subtle, and they had found out subtle physical exercises by which these centres, now closed, could be opened up, the higher psychical life proper to our subtle existence entered into by man, and even the physical and vital obstructions to the experience of the ideal and spiritual being could be destroyed. It is significant that one prominent result claimed by the Hathayogins for their practices and verified in many respects was a control of the physical life-force which liberated them from some of the ordinary habits or so-called laws thought by physical science to be inseparable from life in the body. Behind all these terms of ancient psycho-physical science lies the one great fact and law of our being that whatever be its temporary poise of form, consciousness, power in this material evolution, there must be behind it and there is a greater, a truer existence of which this is only the external result and physically sensible aspect. Our substance does not end with the physical body; that is only the earthly pedestal, the terrestrial base, the material starting-point. As there are behind our waking mentality vaster ranges of consciousness subconscient and superconscient to it of which we become sometimes abnormally aware, so there are behind our gross physical being other and subtler grades of substance with a finer law and a greater power which support the denser body and which can by our entering into the ranges of consciousness belonging to them be made to impose that law and power on our dense matter and substitute their purer, higher, intenser conditions of being for the grossness  and limitation of our present physical life and impulses and habits. If that be so, then the evolution of a nobler physical existence not limited by the ordinary conditions of animal birth and life and death, of difficult alimentation and facility of disorder and disease and subjection to poor and unsatisfied vital cravings ceases to have the appearance of a dream and chimera and becomes a possibility founded upon a rational and philosophic truth which is in accordance with all the rest that we have hitherto known, experienced or been able to think out about the overt and secret truth of our existence. So it should rationally be; for the uninterrupted series of the principles of our being and their close mutual connection is too evident for it to be possible that one of them should be condemned and cut off while the others are capable of a divine liberation. The ascent of man from the physical to the supramental must open out the possibility of a corresponding ascent in the grades of substance to that ideal or causal body which is proper to our supramental being, and the conquest of the lower principles by supermind and its liberation of them into a divine life and a divine mentality must also render possible a conquest of our physical limitations by the power and principle of supramental substance. And this means the evolution not only of an untrammelled consciousness, a mind and sense not shut up in the walls of the physical ego or limited to the poor basis of knowledge given by the physical organs of sense, but a lifepower liberated more and more from its mortal limitations, a physical life fit for a divine inhabitant and,—in the sense not of attachment or of restriction to our present corporeal frame but an exceeding of the law of the physical body,—the conquest of death, an earthly immortality. For from the divine Bliss, the original Delight of existence, the Lord of Immortality comes pouring the wine of that Bliss, the mystic Soma, into these jars of mentalised living matter; eternal and beautiful, he enters into these sheaths of substance for the integral transformation of the being and nature.

How to Win Friends and Influence People: a Vedic Psychological Approach

To answer this question, we first need to understand human anatomy, i.e., what we are made of, what friendship means, what winning it means psychologically. Let me first start by giving a short primer on Vedic conception of who I am and my components.
 

Vedic Psychological Anatomy: A Primer

I am articulating here, a subset of the comprehensive Vedic model of life. This model is an amalgam of descriptions from various Vedic sources - Upanishads, Sankhya, Tantra, Ayurveda in particular. However, I adopt Sri Aurobindo's interpretation of these due to its academically palatable presentation for modern audience. A summary of his interpretation can be found in this excerpt from the Life Divine.  My articulation is based on my understanding of this description.

I am paramaatman, the essence of everything. Though I am joy itself and need not acquire it by effort, I manifest the universe as various expressions of my innate joy and to experience them, create condensed forms of myself called koshas or sheaths. I create and uphold a projection of myself as embodiment of joy, the aanandamaya purusha. That purusha in turn expresses himself as innumerable cosmic principles or dharmas symbolically represented as vijnaanamaya purushas. They are also called jiivaatmans. Each vijnaanamaya purusha works out the implications of his principle by creating and upholding a series of approximate ideas or standpoints. These are symbolically represented as manomaya purushas or kaarana shariiras/causal idea bodies. The manomaya purusha in turn spawns a condensed expression of itself in conscious energy or praana. This condensed form of itself is its praanamaya kosha. It is also called suukshma shariira/subtle body. The praanamaya purusha in turn builds up and upholds a material form called annamaya kosha or sthoola shariira for the sake of physical interaction and experience. 

So in summary, I who am 1) eternal delight express myself in progressively grosser condensed forms as 2) cosmic principle, 3) its approximations as mental ideas, 4) their realizations as a series of births of conscious beings with 5) physical bodies. Behind my physical form there are these four subtler forms of myself upholding and sustaining it. This is shown pictorially in the above picture.

I am a cosmic principle, an idea, a group self, a self-asserting life force as well as a physical body.
Each of these koshas or aspects of me is normally preoccupied with striving for its own existence, assertion and expansion. Whenever a kosha tastes success in its effort, it feels satisfied and at ease momentarily, letting the innate delight shine through. This is what the kosha experiences as happiness or sukha. 

It is the turbulence of a kosha that prevents the continued experience of bliss that is native to the inmost self. So the secret of lasting joy lies in not getting entangled in the cravings of the koshas but giving them the energy to operate while remaining detached, as a witness.

The Grades of Joy 

The joy of vijnanamaya kosha is in the triumph of dharma.

Manomaya kosha has two components: buddhi/intellect and manas/community self (family, team, nation etc). The joy of buddhi is in establishing harmony and self-consistency of abstract ideas, e.g., a scientific discovery or solving a puzzle. The joy of manas is in the triumph of the community or its members.

The joy of praanamaya kosha is in the triumph of the individual such as winning, domination, expansion of power etc.

The joy of annamaya kosha is physical health, longevity, survival.

Feeling joy when a beloved succeeds is manomaya aananda. Feeling joy when I individually succeed is praanamaya aananda.

The purpose of existence is aanandaanubhuti, experience of bliss. Anything has a value to the extent it gives joy. If one sees no scope for joy in any kosha, then one wants to commit suicide.

Incidentally, my koshas are my forms of substance active in the 7 realms of conscious existence also called the sapta lokas or 7 worlds. Annamaya kosha is in bhuu loka, praanamaya in bhuvarloka, manomaya in svarloka, vijnanamaya spanning mahah and janah lokas aanandamaya in tapoloka  and my supreme self in satyaloka. The 7 chakras are conduits or junction points for communication and energy interchange across the lokas or realms of conscious existence.

Now let us talk about winning friends.

Understanding Friendship

Normally we consider someone as our friend if he/she wishes our welfare. Someone who contributes to our joy is our friend and who contributes to our grief is our foe. 

The motive for others to help me is twofold: transactional vs. communal friendship. Transactional means they give me joy if I give them joy in return. This is praanamaya aananda exchange. Communal means they include me as part of their communal self. They feel my sukha/duhkha  as theirs. Here there is no expectation of a return favor. Hence my praanamaya aananda is their manomaya aananda. This is a more intense bond. Example is what a parent feels towards the child or what a cricket fan feels towards the team or what a patriot feels towards fellow citizens.This kind of communal friendship can be aroused. How? By an act of sacrifice. That is, by doing something that brings joy to a person without any personal benefit or expectation in return. A selfless act causes the recipient to include us in his/her communal self. After that, our joy/sorrow becomes the recipient's. This is the method to arouse team/organisational consciousness in individuals.

How to Win Friends?

How to win lasting friends? One method is by a selfless act. A selfish act on the other hand may create transactional friendship. Every selfless act will make the friendship even stronger. The joy given through the act can belong to any kosha - intellectual help, emotional help, empowering help or physical help.

A second basis for inclusion of others in one's communal self is commonality of interest, i.e., if someone likes what I like. Again the commonality could be preferences in any of the koshas - same ideology, religion, role model, sport, food, etc.

A third powerful way of communal bonding is playing team games, or doing activities together where there is no personal motive of winning over others. When engaging in an activity together, unless there is an ego clash, a praanic bond develops akin to what family members naturally are born with. This aatmiiyataa forms the basis for developing the communal bond which is a manomaya identity. This is the method adopted by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in uniting people. RSS swayamsevaks become lifelong friends by playing games together, not due to ideological compatibility as normally thought.

In summary, the basis of friendship lies in expanding our sense of communal self or manomaya kosha to include others. It is the stepping stone for regaining my original stature of universal embrace. We yearn for friends because feeling others is an expansion of our awareness beyond our individual ego, and there is joy in every expansion. 

The technique to influence others is to find ways for giving joy in doing what we want them to do. Joy is the ultimate currency and the ultimate wealth that everybody is after. Physical wealth is only a means. The four purusharthas or seekings are merely means to achieve the ultimate purushartha i.e., Ananda.

Case Study: India's Foreign Policy

In the dog-eat-dog world of international politics where self-interest rules the roost, India is showing the way of keeping global interest above self-interest through its covid response and its G20 presidency. It has won the trust and friendship of many nations via altruistic response to their problems. It is awakening the manomaya kosha of nations for the first time. Watch this talk by Dr. S. Jaishankar (India's external affairs minister) on the international response to Chandrayaaan and G20.