Leadership Dharma : Arjuna The Timeless Metaphor

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A post-Graduate in Engineering from the IIT Madras, Raghu has devoted almost three decades to transforming the organizational culture across the spectrum from grass roots developmental organizations to Modern Industrial Organizations. He has developed a unique methodology called "Totally Aligned Organization", and a model called the "Tensegrity Mandala" that brings together his understanding of Manufacturing Systems, Human Processes and Yoga.

He is a direct disciple of Yogacharya Krishnamacharya & TKV Desikachar. Raghu has enabled the development of many craft groups and a Tamil theatre group called Koothu-p-Pattarai. He has pioneered an approach to process work that brings together the laboratory learning method with Yoga and theatre.

Raghu Ananthanarayanan has co-founded FLAME TAO Knoware (Pvt.Ltd); Sumedhas Academy for Human context and The Barefoot Academy for Governance. He serves on the board of several companies.

Publications: "Totally Aligned Organization" (Productivity and Quality Publishers, 2nd edition 2008), "Learning through Yoga" (Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram, 2nd Edition 2002), "Organization development and Alignment" (Sage Response, 2013) and many papers in reputed Journals.

We live by stories. When the stories that we tell no longer interest us, then we wither away. What evokes passion is something that gives us meaning and stories give meaning to what we do. But stories by themselves don't do the trick sometimes, when the culture in which the story is told is very different from the culture in which the story is born. If that is so, the story has to be recontextualised. It has to make sense to the people who are reading it/hearing it. In other words, our ancient wisdom - recorded through stories in Upanishads, Jataka kathas, Puranas and Itihasas have to be retold in a way that modern young people can use those stories to reflect on themselves and gain self knowledge. That is how smart people become wise.

Raghu is one such story-teller who knows more than enough about Indian wisdom and is sufficiently deeply interested in the modern IT and entrepreneurial India. He lives with the latest while reflecting on the oldest, at the same time. I have seen it first hand.

My first meeting with Raghu was in Indian Institute of Management Bangalore in early 1990s. I went to Bangalore to do a module on reflective mindset for executives from British Aerospace (BA) (now called BAE SYSTEMS). While my part was only two out of seven-day pro- gram, Raghu was doing yoga sessions twice a day for the participants. Most of the participants were new to yoga and Raghu was again great in creating context and generating interest in yoga through stories. I was amazed that most of the participants attended all his sessions.

I assumed that Raghu was a typical yoga teacher but during one meal together, I learned that Raghu was an engineer with a Bachelors and a Masters degree from IIT Madras (my alma mater) and a very accomplished behavioral scientist in addition to being a yoga instructor. He had written books on yoga as well a book on Organizational Alignment where he has integrated seminal ideas from Yoga with the practice of management. He is a pioneer in integrating yoga (and theatre) into process work. I could see why he could connect to 25 foreigners and keep them occupied in an activity that most of them had never experienced before (this is early 90s). He was creating meaning and connection to what they were doing through his stories.

Despite Raghu's interesting yoga sessions, participants were not engaged in the main executive program that they came to attend. They were not used to sitting in the class rooms for long hours and were emotionally overwhelmed by what they experienced in India in contrast to their own lives back home. By the time I was to facilitate their sessions, the unrest in participants turned to revolt and many were preparing to go back without completing their one week in India. I had a choice to make stay with the design that I came prepared to deliver or use the 'unrest' as a catalyst to dig deeper into their mindsets- either way, I wanted them to reflect on themselves, become more self aware and learn to make better decisions as leaders in the increasingly globalized world. I went with the second choice - decided to throw away my design and started engaging in a live dialogue with them on the changing nature of business and what it meant to them as senior executives. I told them stories of other executives I coached in US, Europe and India and challenged them with deep questions to reflect on. We discussed their busy schedules, lack of work-life balance, constant pressure to perform and increasing competition. We watched movie segments and read a book together called 'Hope for the Flowers' (by Trina Paulus) and discussed how we could 'mind the gap' between our stimulus and responses.