Corporate Vs Political Leaders

I have in some colleges spoken to youngsters on various aspects of leadership. I have also spoken on leadership in my own company to a team of leaders in making. And one aspect that I always over emphasized, is that leaders should be able to inspire trust.

The best of leaders fail if their tracks when teams lack trust in them or if due to some turn of events, the trust that the teams have dwindles or is all together breached.

On the other hand, when we examine the political arena, we find a host of leaders who people don’t trust. Do their followers trust, an extrovert Lalu, a reclusive Mayawati or an enigmatic Jayalalitha. The answer that is mostly expected is a vehement denial and complete lack of trust such leaders. How then are these leaders successful and how they script their comeback is something that baffles the common mind.

Unlike corporate leaders, the political leaders thrive on the cult that they create about themselves. Misgivings notwithstanding, I am talking about leaders who have used caste and other demographic diversity to monopolize power and am not alluding in any measure to some transformational or inspirational leaders. As the latter rely mostly on personal charisma. They also don’t follow any pre-defined model for leadership. They are impromptu,  masters of the moment, and skilled in the art of the rhetoric.

Corporates leaders lead their immediate teams, which in turn provide leadership and guidance to the next level and this process of cascading continues. Political leaders don’t work with the people they lead. They work with their secretariat, which does not have the power to comment on criticize them. The people who this political class leads are far removed from their leaders, and seldom get a peak into what they do, and rely more on what they say.

While corporate leaders like to work to a plan, political leaders including transformational leaders may often like extempore action till the time the activities are not antagonistic to their public image. They also maintain deliberated distance and calibrated allofness from their followers. They try to create a perception of un-approachability that stokes that myth and cult that they try to build around themselves.

Ability to listen, and then ability distill the salient points made by the team is a very important trait for corporate leader. It is said that Alfred Sloan would very intently listen in a meeting, and then in the end, beautifully summarize the meeting, and send a brief memo on the actionable points to the team. While this trait is important for both, it is particularly important for political leaders, given their variegated mass base.

But one thing that is common to both corporate and military leaders is that both work to a plan. For any leader to succeed, it is very critical that he conceives a plan, and then works to that plan. And how many times plans succeed is something that I don’t need to expound upon. We all know, more often than not, in personal and business lives, plans don’t succeed. This does not mean, that we don’t plan or work to that plan. If we don’t work to a plan, losing traction of the firmament on which we stand is almost certain. The reasons why plans don’t often work are usually extraneous to the plan and exist in the evolving eco-system, which swoops on the plan, and frustrates it. For a pharma company, it could be warning letter from the regulator, or for a manufacturing labor-intensive business, it could be a strike.

Napoleon was a very meticulous planner, and so was Alexander of Greece. But we all know their plans failed more often than they worked. But Napoleon was prone to planning each successive battle with greater meticulousness than the previous one. Plans can be hostage to unforeseen events but their failure not withstanding, planning cannot be jettisoned to vagaries of the ecosytem. A team working to a plan has far more chances of succeeding in adversity than a team relying on adhocism.

Ranthambhore Tiger

In India, what we need to urgently create at all levels, is an eco-system that recognizes merit, also inculcates a mentality to spot and reward it. Another deficiency that grievously plagues our information resource base is our inadvertent but stark dismissal of informal and anecdotal knowledge as claptrap and bunkum, and I will tell you why.

A couple of weeks ago, just for a get-away, we drove to Ranthambhore to experience the Tiger Safari.

Spotting the Tiger is an art in itself, as this elusive creature is shy and shuns the human gaze. Besides, you cannot track it scientifically by following pug - marks, or sometimes by smell of its fresh urine, because most wildlife authorities in India, in the interest of ecology don’t allow such route improvisation to tourists. They demarcate tracks on which mechanized transport can move on, and tourist vehicles cannot deviate from such track. So spotting is often from very far, triggered by the warning calls of a sambhar, nilgai or a deer, and always while the tiger is walking, as moving objects are easier to detect.

Tiger tourists come from far and beyond, and hope and anticipation for sightings is writ as large on their faces, as the disappointment and despair after failing to do so.

I therefore was very intrigued by the fact, why the tiger is not collared with a radio device with which its location can be tracked – a practice well proven in Africa. This will immensely improve sightings and also help the conservationists in tracking this majestic beast, giving it a fillip to its own safety.

From local anecdotal knowledge I discovered something very interesting and something that would otherwise require years of grueling research and observation to establish, the tiger when mating grips the tigress round the neck and the collar hampers such gripping.

Path breaking work for the tiger-ecology has been done by foresters like Billy Arjun Singh, Kailash Sankala and Fateh Sinh Rathore.

The 400 sq kilometres of Ranthambhore Jungles were not so neglected as some other forests in the country, as they served as the game reserves for the Maharajas of Jaipur, due to sheer proximity with Jaipur, and were in some measure maintained for their recreational hunting.

Nevertheless, unless declared as a part of the Project Tiger in 1973, this ecology would have withered away, and the tiger would have succumbed to extinction by  poachers or vengeful villagers.

Today from near extinction, Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve has a healthy population of about 60 tigers and is poised to rise.

Admittedly, the single largest contribution to the tiger-ecology of Ranthambore was made by Fateh Sinh Rathore. This handle-bar moustachoued forester had a critical role to play in the preservation of the Ranthambhore park. He understood, if this majestic beast with such exquisite mien that makes all other look gauche in front of it, had to be preserved, habitation in the precincts of the forest must be relocated.

And this he did not by the power of fiat, but by that of persuasion, by the zeal of a reformer, by convincing the villagers of how the tiger was integral to their habitat, and source of their sustenance.

The Star Male captured on my Cannon 400 mm Lens

Few facts about the tiger while lesser known were well understood by Fateh. He had, in his long days of tracking tigers as a Forest Officer, realized that the Tiger, contrary to common belief, was not a nocturnal animal. It probably came out in the night only because it wanted to avoid contact or confrontation with man. He also observed, while generally believed to be strictly territorial, sometimes it acted in packs like the lions. This knowledge of behavioral patterns of the tiger helped  Fateh to lay the foundation of a sustainable tiger ecology. A beast that hunts not by chasing but ambush, cannot live in a habitat denuded of trees and bushes, it is these trees and bushes that provide him the ambush. If it was appearing in the night, it was not because it was nocturnal, but because during the day, there was too much human activity within the forest.

Fateh, true to his name, an indefatigable fighter for the rights of the tiger, while on one hand, relentlessly liaised with the government and his own department, for allocation of funds and resources to revive the Tiger park, on the other, he embarked on a crusade to educate the villagers on aspects of health and ecology.

Today, his son, a medical doctor by training, but a forester at heart, and pretty much the alter ego of his father, runs a resort called Khem Vilas sprawled over a 25 acre of once barren land, now verdant from the last 20 years of toil and labor of his family. Run and managed by Usha Rathore, his daughter in-law, it is a boutique property tucked away in the desert yet ensconced in green.   

I exhort all my friends to tour all Tiger reserves so that there is desire from the government and people to preserve them.

Re-instate her Right to Choose

In ancient India, which I will continue to call Bharat, risking criticism from Anglophile modernists, the woman had the right to choose. And the ancient tradition of Swayamvara bears testimony to that right.

Even the flawless, God incarnate, “maryada purshottam” (human examplaire – even English has its limitations) Lord Ram the son of an illustrious Dasharath of Suryavansha had to queue up for Sita and the garland in Sita’s hand was symbolic of the choice that she had the right to exercise.

Today, a degenerate Bharat and resurgent India have come to be a diametrically opposite society, oppressive perhaps, not only to women, but also to all weaker sections without exception. Many believe, the society is cruel to women, but I can tell you - and you could double check with Suhail Seth and Chetan Bhagat, both omniscient commentators on all that can be - that Indian society is cruel to all weaker sections, and that women just happens to be one of them.

Geopolitics, a science, that Kautilya tried so hard to teach and propagate, India never really understood. And her own people connived to let invasions succeed and invaders stay on their land, much to the detriment of the indigenous value systems, social order and economic health of the country.

With invasions also comes the value system of the invaders. And due to the awe and aura of the victory, the value system of the invaders always prevails upon that of the invaded. As invasions continued, a prosperous but disunited India not only wailed under their onslaught its social fabric also warped. And we became a confused mass of protoplasm struggling to figure out what we stood for.

In the total turmoil that ensued for several hundreds of years, the woman continued to enjoy a place of importance at home, but she lost it completely outside home. The mother was respected, the sister worshipped and protected, but only till she stayed at home and slaved for the family. While she was adorned at home, if she stepped out un-chaperoned, she was scorned. She wielded immense power if she complied, but would lose all it and even get labeled if she did not comply. And of course was she was denied the right to choose.

Marry the man that is chosen by your parents, meet the man that the brother approves of, and you taste power that is unforeseen. Exercise your choice and get sullied, face abuse and get labeled.

I believe, in majority of Indian households despite lesser education, woman is not a minnow but a matriarch, who has the matronly overreach on the family – the lowest social classes where physical abuse is a rule excepted. My grandfather named his house after his wife, and so did my father name the house that he constructed on his. There are just two points in case.

I have a feeling that rapists too respect their mothers a lot, and would hate to see them defiled or abused. They love their sisters as much, but it is the other mans wife, mother and sister that they do not respect. This phenomenon is not uncommon in India. We disrespect others time, profession, property, space and sensibilities. While we fiercely want to guard our own.

This is a very deep-set rot in our society. And in causing this rot, the intelligentsia and elite both are as culpable as the hoi polloi. The masses see this as a class struggle of have-nots against the haves. The intelligentsia has its own blinkered view. Hussain paints Saraswati in state of stark dishabille, but paints his mother fully clad. Charlie Hebdo may caricature Allah but may not show the same degree of irreverence for Christ. And the intelligentsia rallies behind such irreverence in the name of freedoms for which the concomitant responsibilities they turn a blind eye to.

It is also imperative that we develop a deeper insight into social issues. We must dissect situations, analyze the root cause and develop strategies to address them holistically. We must make robust plan of action with experts in tow, put them on a pilot test and implement if the result of the pilot is predictive. But on the contrary, we huddle in subject agnostic people to come on TV to debate on issues they have scant domain knowledge of, bicker and scar each other, and the problem stays as defiant and hydra headed as ever.

   

Hegemonize Uncharted Waters

One way to retain your sway and hegemony on a particular field, even though you have lost the lead, is by being the front-runner in framing the rules for that field. Each time America loses its lead in a particular field of trade or war, it tries to make up for it by promulgating initiatives for framing rules to regulate that arena, particularly if that arena has been till date largely uncharted – and those who have had the chance of engaging with the US bureaucracy – would be familiar with their internal parlance of “rules of the road” used to denote the drafting of rules for such uncharted arenas.

And now vide the Trans-Pacific-Partnership Treaty (TPP), this is exactly what the US is trying to accomplish. It is framing the “rules of the road” for the relatively uncharted territory of international seas.

While, there is no gainsaying the fact, that the international maritime trade is pretty much under Chinese domination – 80 pct of the steel containers that liners ferry are made in China – but America continues to the be the dominant naval power. How long this American  hegemony on naval dominance will last is something that only time will tell. The pace at which Chinese maritime presence is surging and the manner in which China is muscle flexing in the South China Sea, it may not be wrong to assume that China is rehearsing for similar dominance in the Pacific Corridor as well.

Till about 700 AD, the centre of Maritime trade was to a large extent the Indian Ocean, and for the next 700 years, China dominated the trade, the theater shifting from the Indian Ocean to the South China sea. Thereafter, the quest of the spices, followed by colonial ambitions and zeal to spread Christianity brought the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and then finally English merchants ships to anchor in Asian sea waters, with Mallaca being often the center of such trade corridor.  

With the gradual demise and withering away of colonialism, a resurgent and modern China, still inconsolable about the 100 years of Western domination on its soil, the concomitant exploitation and opium trade, coupled with the trauma repeated Japanese ingress, is now finally showing its assertiveness in the waters of the South China Sea much to the discomfort of Japan, Vietnam and Philippines.    

                                                                                                            to be continued….