This is an absorbing book about a subject that has begun to come in the public space only in the last twenty years and yet remains tantalisingly incomplete.
The author has been a professional manager for close to 40 years. He completed his engineering at IIT Kharagpur and joined Unilever and more recently has been with the Tata Group of companies. He is currently a Director of Tata & Sons. He brings to bear his rich working experience to make a compelling case for effective (as opposed to ‘efficient’) leadership.
The central idea developed in the volume is the notion that managers can potentially end up under-performing or become poor learners if they fail to develop and exploit their intuitive skills. Knowledge, the author insists, is largely about what you know.
It can be taught or easily acquired from others. Intuition on the other hand, is about what you do not know you know. It cannot be taught and will have to be grasped by self-effort.
Developing wisdom
“When knowledge is integrated with intuition”, says Gopalakrishnan, “it becomes wisdom.”
Just as a plant can be artificially developed into a bonsai, managers too can needlessly constrict their growth or self-development by ignoring the one faculty they will have to increasingly depend upon in the future world of business— the power of intuition.
It is a persuasive argument. Since much of the epistemological premises of the discipline of management are anchored in analytical intelligence, skills associated with emotional and spiritual intelligence tend to get marginalized. This is true of business schools the world over as well as training programs in companies.
Two events helped to change this state of affairs. The first was 9/11 and the second was the unceremonious collapse of multi-billion dollar entities like Enron which highlighted the consequences of commerce without reference to ethical or moral restraint. Gopalakrishnan’s volume does much to bring these issues squarely back on the agenda.
The book is replete with several interesting anecdotes containing several useful insights for those who are searching.
The author recounts a conversation with David Fajardo, an engaging taxi driver, he met in Palm Springs in California, who shared with him an important lesson he had learnt from his grandmother:
“You cannot give what you do not have. You cannot have what you do not give.”
How many organisations understand the wisdom contained in those statements?
Other interesting anecdotes include the relationship between the late JRD Tata and John Peterson, his mentor, between Jack Welch and Dave Cote who later became Chairman and CEO of Honeywell and the listening abilities of India’s former prime minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri and how it triggered ‘Operation Flood’, the milk revolution that later swept the country. At the core lies the importance of incubating a set of values that is appropriate to the prevailing context.
“Values,” concludes the author, “and only values, can help us withstand the political, social and economic turbulence that are inevitable. The greatest mistake leaders can make is to assume that results alone matter and that morality and goodness have gone out of style.
“The great and more satisfying thing in life is a sense of purpose beyond oneself.” It is warmly recommended for both aspiring and practicing managers who wish to meaningfully impact the times we live in.
R. Gopalakrishnan, The Case of the Bonsai Manager, Lessons from Nature on Growing, Penguin Books India, New Delhi, 2007. Pp: xxiv+264. Price: Rs. 450.
