Management Mantras (Keys to Effective Management and Leadership)

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Organizations the world over today are paying more and more attention to how to prevent their workforce from burning themselves out due to an unrelenting pace of work. Views are radically changing on practices to ensure the employees perform consistently well over many years. In this book, Sri Sri offers valuable tips for managers and leaders to become more effective in their roles and also on how to develop a conducive work environment so that both the employees and the organization add value to each other.

H.H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar spiritual leader and humanitarian, was born in 1956 in Papanasam, Tamil Nadu. He established The Art of Living, an international educational and humanitarian NGO with UNESCO consultative status, that aims to relieve individual stress, societal problems and violence. Founded in 1982, with a presence in over 151 countries today, The Art of Living is one of the largest voluntary organizations in the world.

In 1997, he also established a Geneva-based charity, the International Association for human Values, an NGO that engages in relief work and rural development and aims to foster shared global values.

Management begins in the mind. When the mind manages itself better, it can manage anything. Human life is a combination of the concrete and the abstract. Our body is concrete and our mind is abstract. Both positive and negative thoughts emanate from the same brain. We know very little about ourselves. Being better aware of our own mind helps us to understand life better.

Human life is structured just like an atom. At the centre of the atom is the proton and a field of negative charges orbits it. Similarly, we too have virtues at the centre of our being. But if we have not realized these virtues, we roam the outer orbits. So we need to take it for granted that we already have these virtues within us.

Always remember you are a citizen of the world, the whole world belongs to you. There is some virtue to be learnt from every part of the world – teamwork from Japan, precision from Germany, marketing and negotiation skills from the United States, courtesy, decency and refinement from the British, and human values from the villages of India. You will find good qualities everywhere in the world. You too possess these qualities. They only need nourishment.

If you are committed to doing something to uplift life around you, if you are committed to compassion, to creativity, then the world will be a wonderful place. More often than not, we are stuck in our own mindsets. If we could put ourselves in others’ shoes, we would be able to see their point of view. We need to keep changing and attempting different roles.

In any organization, top management should be setting goals to define what is to be achieved. Middle management should deal with how and when the goals need to be fulfilled. Lower management should concern itself with the execution of the means to achieve the goals and ensure the quality of the output. People at the top of the hierarchy need to be expansion-conscious while those at the bottom need to be quality-conscious. But all these levels should work together in harmony. This is the sign of a healthy institution.

An important part of management is creativity. All CEOs and Chairmen want to improve their enterprise, but they sideline research and development – the most creative part of the enterprise. They assume that this is to be done outside the orbit of their enterprise.

Creativity can only come from silence. If we maintain two minutes of silence every day, then we will see that a whole new dimension of life opens up.