Lord Krishna: The Management Guru

The teachings of Lord Krishna are known all over world, the famous Bhagavad –Gita. Five thousand years back Lord Krishna taught Arjuna self-development which is key to leadership skills. The teachings of the Gita centuries back will be applicable to present day where the knowledge of the individual is powerful. If individual wants he can make or unmake. Many corporate can follow the teaching of the Gita for human resources development of the mangers and workers. 

Modern management process and management philosophy can be found in “Sri.Bhagavad Gita” in the dialogue between Lord Krishna and Arjuna. The Mahabharatha war fought on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, Arjuna having seen the array of army of Duryodhana and Pandavas, asks Sri.Krishna to take the chariot and keep it in between the two armies. Arjuna wants to know with whom he has to fight in the battle. Arjuna sees father’s grandsons, maternal uncles, brothers, sons, fathers-in-law and well wishers. After seeing his Kinsmen, Arjuna speaks with grief. and decides not to fight the war. 

Lord Krishna started his dialogue with Arjuna; the essence of this management dialogue was divided into eighteen chapters in the Bhagavad-Gita 1.The Despondency of Arjuna.2.The way of discrimination.3.The way of action. 4. The way of knowledge.5.Renunciation of action.6.The way of contemplation.7.The way of knowledge and realisation.8.The way to supreme spirit.9.The way of royal knowledge and royal secret10.Meditation of the divine glories. 11.The vision of the universal form.12.The way of devotion.13.Discrimination between nature and soul14.The separation of three gunas.15.The way to supreme person.16.The distinction between divine and demonical attributes.17.The separation of the three kinds of faith.18.The way of renunciation. 

After completing the dialogue. Arjuna says, my delusion is destroyed and I have gained my memory through your (Lord Krishna) teaching, I am ready to fight battle, free from doubt, about my duties will be carried out at your command. This clearly shows the management and development of individual (self) in right direction taught by Lord Krishna to Arjuna which made Arjuna do his duty selflessly by fighting the historic Kurukshetra war and winning the war was his goal. 

What do Siemens India Ltd., Silicon Graphics DCM Data Systems, Ambuja Industries and Times of India have in common with Federal Express, American Airlines, New York Times and General Electric Inc. The fact is that all of them have realised the role as well as importance of the individual in human resource development and that self-development is the key to development of organization. The power of individual has been realised since eternity starting with Lord Krishna to present day.

With competition hotting up between the corporate in India and around the world, Human Resources Development (HRD), for achieving a particular task, with an increase emphasis on productivity is becoming vital for corporate in India and abroad. 
“We need leadership, not just brains,” says Roderick Wilkinson, Fellow of the Institute of Personal Management, U.K. He goes on to give some examples on what he means by this, “For instance it was in Great Britain that Alexander Fleming who developed Penicillin, but it was business leadership that commercialised in the U.S. It was a Scotsman named Baird, who invented the Television, but it was again the leadership in Italy, U.S.A, Japan and other countries that developed it beyond greater bounds than Britain, found possible. Hence we need to realize that even the best brains need leader who can harness their intellect and channelize it towards the productive results that will benefits us all 

The four fundamental functions of management process of modern management are 

(1) Planning 
(2) Organising 
(3) Actuating 
(4) controlling 
Which were taught by Lord Sri Krishna to Arjuna 5000 years back through the dialogue between Arjuna and Lord Krishna, which became the Gita –The management epic. 

Gita teaches the fundamentals about the development of individuals mind, concentration, self control, development of the character, knowledge, virtues, duty, work, action, devotion, leading to liberation. The Gita teaching will help the development of human resources, which is an asset to the organisation. One of the major goals of management is to develop human resources into hard to replace assets of a firm. 

As Bill Gates the Microsoft Inc. USA under the series “Ask Bill” said, “People are our most important resource”. Finding great people and keeping them is key to success. When it comes to tracking, turn- over there is two numbers to watch; one is the departure rate, i.e. the percentage of work force that leaves the company in a given year. . The other number is more important, It is known to our Human Resources Development Department as the “attrition rate” the percentage of employees that a company losses although it wants to keep them. Although our rate is low every year we lose people we really want to keep we try to look at every departure and ask why? What motivated that? Should the company has made more attractive to stay? Our company is unusual in that most of employees who are important to us are owners of the company and tend to have made a lot of money through our stock option plan. They tend to have a financial freedom not to work. We have to work particularly hard to make Jobs interesting, because pay cheques are not what motivate many of our best people. Fortunately, smart people like to work with smart people and they like to work on products that have a big impact. But keeping them is an “ongoing challenge”. 

Thus Gita-teachings help the all- round development of the human resources to reach the goal of the individuals, enterprises, organisations, Governments and Societies. The teaching of Gita is eternal because it is practiced in the past, present and future for development of the individual, for the development of the moral and happy society. 

So follow teachings for individual development.