An Exemplary Strategist : Corporate India Rediscovers Gandhi

An Exemplary Strategist : Corporate India Rediscovers Gandhi

It is not at all surprising if the Management Guru C.K. Prahlad and renowned economist and professor, Arindam Chaudhuri are  talking about a new role model: Mahatma Gandhi. The Father of the Nation is now being held up as the master strategist, an exemplary leader and someone whose ideas and tactics Corporate India can emulate.

They advocate that Corporate India needs to revisit Gandhi's ideas and apply the lessons learnt from him to their leadership styles. His ideas are of particular relevance to India at this juncture, as it struggles to find ways to inch closer to the 8-10 percent gross domestic product growth rate necessary to become an economic superpower.

Gandhi, in fact, reinvented the rules of the game to deal with a situation where all the available existing methods had failed. He broke tradition. He understood that you cannot fight the British with force. So he decided to change the game in a fundamentally different way. He unleashed the power of ordinary people, inspired women and men in the country to fight under a unifying goal. Resource constraint did not bother him. He aimed at a common agenda: Poorna Swaraj. That was the motivation.

Drawing lessons from this, corporate India needs to fundamentally change the way it can grow.

Freedom or Poorna Swaraj was the goal then, but we did not know how to achieve. Same way, today, we do not know how to grow at 10 percent or more or how to create 10-15 million new jobs every year. We have to invent a new way and that is what Gandhi taught us. He had clarity of goals and the courage to invent the means. We need to change the paradigm on how to win.

Mahatma Gandhi's example is a perfect case of adopting styles to suit the culture. The country today stands divided on whether what he did was good or bad. We just know one thing: there was never a leader before him nor one after him who could unite us all and bring us out in the streets to demand for what was rightfully ours. To me, he is the greatest leader our land has ever seen.

Gandhi's leadership style is being termed as 'follower-centric' and one that took into account existing conditions before determining the strategy.

Gandhi advocated having leadership styles that were dependent on the circumstances. When Gandhi was in South Africa he launched his protests in a suit and a tie. But when he came back to India, he thought of khadi and launched non-violent protests on a greater scale.

Ideas travel very fast. Gandhi is a fascinating figure. On the one hand, he had totally ambivalent feelings about industrial manufacturing. But, on the other, he was a wonderful strategist, showman and leader. He had an amazing public relations network and a very good relationship with the press then.

For instance, look at the Dandi march. If Gandhi had gone there quietly, it would just not have made an impact. He knew he had to create an event to make an impact and so he took his followers on a march that stirred popular imagination of the time. He had a total understanding of the human psychology and used it along with his public relation skills.

Gandhi's style of leadership as applied to corporate India would involve making even the lowest person in the organization believe in it and the significance of his contribution towards it. In business, empowerment is all about making sure everyone is connected to the organization's goals. Gandhi has a way of doing that: making sure that everyone in the cause is connected to the goal.

In the last few years, there is a thinking that capitalism is not just about creating wealth, but you have to take care of the shareholders and stakeholders, too. This is why the business leaders are clear that Gandhi's managerial ideas are what they want to follow.

Ref:

1.     C.K. Prahlad

2.     Arindam Choudhari

3.     Arun Maira, chief executive officer, Boston Consulting Group,

4.     Dr Gita Piramal, Managing Editor, The Smart Manager.