Jwalant Bhavsar

In India, we have a traditional tale of Lord Satya Narayana. Satya Narayana is the Narayana form of Lord Vishnu. Satya Narayana is worshiped commonly by Hindus in their homes with family & friends, usually on a Poornima (full moon) day of the month. In this pooja called Satya Narayana Pooja, people worship by reciting the gracious story of Lord Satya Narayana. This story was originally told by Lord Vishnu to the Sage Narada for the benefit of humankind.

This pooja is conducted to ensure abundance in ones life. Many people carry out this pooja immediately after or along with an auspicious occasion like a marriage or moving into a new house or any other success in life.  The Satya Narayana puja can be performed on any day. It is not a Pooja confined to any festivities. But Poornima (full moon day) or Sankranti are considered to be most auspicious day for this pooja.  Performing this pooja in the evening is considered more appropriate. On the day of the pooja, the devotee has to fast.

It struck to me on Ram Navmi, The birthday of Lord Ram as per Hindu calendar that how could Lord Satya Narayana be so blissful on all His devotees and how the devotees were actually committed to follow on the rituals, spiritually. One conclusion that crossed my mind about the rituals that would please Lord Satya Narayana is what i am going to share with you.

Narayana is one name of Lord Vishnu. Lord Vishnu is considered to be the God of Sustenance & Stability. This Narayana is only Satya Narayana, the God of Sustenance & Stability.

Satya means “Righteousness”. Satya Narayana is Righteous Sustenance & Stability.

Sustenance & Stability is obtained by synchronizing our thoughts, emotions & actions. Thus in order to be Stable & Sustained Righteously, we have to utilizing our thoughts, emotions & actions righteously.

How can we know that our thoughts, emotions & actions are righteous?

Those thoughts, emotions & actions, which do not produce any guilt within us & simultaneously giving a feeling of fulfillment to us, our society & humanity can be considered as righteous actions.

This Satya Narayana is That Righteous Sustenance & Stability.

Few insightful questions:

1. Are we able to control or even manage our thoughts, emotions & actions?

2. Have we dedicated our thoughts, emotions & actions to any righteous sources from which we may consistently obtain inspiration?

3. Have we participated in any pooja of Lord Satya Narayana to get the inspiration of leading a righteous life?

4. Do we consider the Indian festivals & rituals logical/illogical without understanding the correct perspective behind them?

Namaste.

Currently was reading a book on Introduction to Human Resource Management & went through a topic saying “Responsibility, Authority & Accountability.” It says that, “One of the key area of decision-making for a manager is delegation – What to delegate, when to delegate and who to delegate to.

As a part of answers to the questions above, the author seems to have put the three terms viz. Responsibility, Authority & Accountability. Though they seem synonyms still relating these terms to the questions on What, When and Who, the author has wisely tried to clarify the three terms as follows:

Responsibility is the obligation of a manager to carry out the duties assigned to him/her. It is a role/position depends on the functions assigned to the role.

Authority enables managers to act, exert influence & make decisions in carrying out their responsibilities. It refers to the right to give orders and the power to exact obedience from others in the process of discharging the responsibility.

An employee is Accountable to his/her boss for the performance of a task when the responsibility and the authority to perform is have been delegate to him/her. In other words, the employee’s answerability on using the authority in discharging a responsibility is termed accountability.

Well, I could understand the motive behind this classification, but I am not satisfied with the way they have been classified. Firstly, Responsibility and Authority can be considered as factors of delegation or rather roles in simplified terms. Talking about accountability, it is a way of being. Through delegating responsibility or authority, accountability is automatically delegated. It seems weird when it has to be mentioned that a manager is also accountable for his responsibility of authority.

Accountability as per me has to be considered as an important trait of a manager. What kind of manager can one be, if he/she cannot manage to be accountable of not only the responsibilities and authorities but also the success & failures of his performance and his teams performance. It is not only about being accountable to a boss or superior. It is being accountable to oneself, his/her roles and also those learners under him/her.

This also opens up new dimensions for considering the traits of a manager as a decisive factor while delegating responsibilities and authorities. Well more about that later.

Ask yourself following question to know if you can be delegated an important task or not?

1.    Do I have the complete competency (Attitude, Knowledge, Skill & Spirit) of being delegated the responsibility of this important task?

2.    If the answer to the above question is YES, then what should I do to enrich this competency while fulfilling the responsibility appropriately?

3.    If the answer to the question no. 1 is NO, then what should I do to be competent enough in order to get the responsibility of this important task?

4.    In any-case, to who am I answerable to in case of successful/unsuccessful execution of the important task? How will if do it?

Namaste.

Enrich unconditionally

Wisdom has the power to enrich our lives. It can change our hearts, our perspective, and our attitude towards things, toward life, and towards others.

-       Shasha Azevedo.

Wisdom and knowledge though synonyms have different features. Knowledge can be acquired from outside, wisdom is something which occurs within. Tuition can help us get knowledge but to get wisdom, one needs intuition. Knowledge can be repetitive, imitated or stereotyped while wisdom is creative, fresh & unique. Shasha, in the above statement mentions that wisdom has the power to enrich our lives.

Enrichment in general terms is improvement or enhancement of quality or value. But I believe it has to be holistic. We cannot call ourselves to be enriched if we are earning some lakhs rupees in a month but having a bad backache daily evening. In a long run, it is going to spoil the quality of work and/or health. We can only feel enriched when we have an absolute balance in our life. Though, we ourselves are the judges to decide the criteria on which we can say that our life is balanced but that criteria are individual and not universal.

What could be universal criteria to identify that our life is in balance or not? I consider G. Narayanaji’s three words very fit for leading us to the answer of this question. They are, “Offer and Receive”. The meaning that occurred to me is that when an act of offering something happens through us to the extent that we start receiving something, then we can be truly say that we are enriched. But in this whole process of offering or receiving, if intentions, expectations or calculations will occur, it will become “give & take”.

Friends, being capable of offering a service, commodity or money without any intention, expectations or calculations are the sign of enrichment. Here, one more thing is to be considered that there is not measurement to offering. It does not matter how much to you offer, what matters is how do you offer.

This is the sign of true leaders. They enrich themselves by striking the perfect balance in their life & thus reaching to the level of offering, but by doing this, they enrich the people surrounding them unconditionally. To enrich unconditionally, we have to be enriched first. Pt. Shriram Sharmaji nicely shows the route to enrichment as “reducing necessities and coordinating with conditions.”

आवश्यकताओं को कम करे और परिस्थितियों से तालमेल बिठाएं |

- पं. श्रीराम शर्माजी

Here are few questions that may help us know if we are enriched and if we are capable of offering enrichment?

1. Am I physically, mentally, financially & socially fulfilled?
2. Is there a possibility of reducing my physical, mental, financial & social necessity to an extent that it does not disturb my balance of life?
3. Can I offer the surplus of my necessities, unconditionally, to those who deserve in order to enrich them thus balancing their life?
4. Why would I offer anything that I have reaped or earned?

I hope this article helps your to enrich yourself and thus others. If you like this article, do drop your comments or suggestions about it. Feel free to share it with your friends, family members and colleagues.

Namaste.

Direct Competently

We accomplish things by directing our desires, not by ignoring them.

-       Anonymous

Are you breathing? Well if the answer is yes then congratulations, you are alive. I asked this question sometime back to myself and I realized that I had totally forgotten the fact that I am breathing. It was happening but i was not aware towards it. I am sure you are also realizing the same awareness after reading this question. I would relate this realization with “directing”. In an organization or in a relationship with others or self, directing can only be called effective when the person who is directed does not even realize that he is been directed. Just like our breaths. It just happens naturally & necessarily never-ending. But to produce appropriate (not necessarily ‘desired’) results, it is necessary that we execute this action of directing, competently.

Let us understand what competency is all about. 

Competency, in general is about having the attitude, knowledge & skill to do something successfully. Very well, a man who has a attitude to harm people, knowledge about people whom he is going to harm & appropriate skills can be called competent? He may execute it successfully by massacring attack on innocent people.

What I have understood about competency, especially when we are looking at it from the context of leadership is the one who has the attitude, knowledge, skill as well as the SPIRIT TO SERVE others while doing something successfully. A question may arise that serving can be an attitude, well the answer is attitudes may change, spirit is something which is default & persistent.

A leader always directs competently. Which implies that he has the attitude, knowledge, skill & spirit to serve while directing himself & people around him to do something successfully, provided he directs himself and others in such a way that it becomes a habit, just like breathing. Though unaware towards it, still happening consistently. How is that possible?

The answer to this is in the quote stated above. “We accomplish things by directing our desires, not by ignoring them.” Desires are a part of life, we desire to live which makes the breathing possible. But these desires can be directed towards obtaining success through practice & spirit to serve being detached.

श्रीभगवानुवाच 
असंशयं  महाबाहो  मनो  दुर्निग्रहं  चलं |
अभ्यासेन  तु  कौन्तेय वैराग्येण  च  गृह्यते ||
- श्रीमद् भगवद गीता, ६-३५

Few questions helping to introspect our ability to direct competently:

1.    Why do I do what I do?

2.    Who are benefitted out of it apart from my family & friends?

3.    Do people love me?

4.    When was the last time I did something for others without expecting a return?

I dedicate this article to Shrimad Bhagvad Gitaji who enlightens us all. I surrender to It and my It give me the strength & serenity to be in It’s laps forever. I also thank Shri G. Narayanaji for leading me to this path of enlightenment by gifting Shrimad Bhagvad Gitaji in my life.

Namaste.

Communicate effectively

Nothing is so simple that it cannot be misunderstood.

- Freeman Teague Jr.

“Communication is all about producing desired result,” said Mr. Suresh Patel, my coach & an Independent Management Trainer. The general perspective that prevails about communication is that it is an exchange of ideas & thoughts, sharing of emotions, expressing oneself to others etc. but this explanation by Mr. Suresh open up a totally new dimension of the way of looking at communication. Exchanging, sharing & expressing are the processes that are done in communication, but the purpose is to produce desired results.

This also implies that if we do not get desired results, there is something wrong in the way we communicated. Lets see an e.g., A child is playing with a knife in presence of his parents, the end result is to make him aware of the danger as well as take away the knife from him. Strategy No. 1, lovingly explaining it to the boy that knife can hurt and he is still too young to play with it. This strategy does not affect him and he start playing even move curiously. Then comes Strategy No. 2; going closure and with a chance, snatching away the knife from him. The difference between Strategy No. 1 & 2 is the alteration that happened in the process of communication in order to get desired results.

Thinking about on the roots of communication, I explored that behind every communication, there is a concern. I quote it this way;

“Concern Creates Communication”

A leader always identifies the concern behind any communication that takes place. For identifying the concern, a leader should ask him/her self one single question, “WHY?”

In any communication, if WHY is identified, then results & processes will be very clear. Lets elaborate this WHY.

WHY = What How to Yield.

So, a leader communicates to get desired results that can be identified by knowing the concern behind any communication. Once, the concern is identified, the process and result will be very clear.

Few questions that may help you know if you are communicating:

1.    When I speak people ____________________________________________.

2.    When I look at the mirror, I say to my self that ______________________.

3.    I want to ________________________________ but ____________________.

4.    Make a list of all failures of your life and try to identify the reason behind it. You may email me the reasons if you feel I can help.

Friends, it is communication that runs this whole world. Lets play our part by leading ourselves and others by communicating effectively.

Namaste.