Gandhi, the name itself will invokes awe and admiration. A man known to be steadfast in his beliefs and principles and continues to inspire us that anything is possible as long as truth is on our side. The principles embodied in Gandhi's revolution are important lessons to all leaders as it is a truly sustainable path towards leadership. Before Gandhi, revolutions are commonly associated with violence, war and riots but Gandhi turned this association on its head with his concept of non-violent resistance. What I admire most is Gandhi assumed the British Lords to be ignorant rather than evil and the best way to counter ignorance is education rather than retaliation. If we believe in this in our day-to-day challenges as a manager/leader, we would certainly do better and time would be far more productive if we focus on educating our co-workers or clients rather than retaliating. This book by Alan Axelrod provides a quick reference to modern leaders on principles of management inspired by Gandhi but of course, readers are advised to form their own judgement because after all, the principles are interpreted by Alan Axelrod and not directly from Gandhi himself which is why my next target is to read Gandhi's autobiography. Nevertheless, the book is concise and easy to read and would be useful to any leaders/managers.
Excerpts from the book summarised below (Words in blue are mine):
1. Never compromise on your no-compromise zone, but never confuse a refusal to compromise with a refusal to communicate.
2. You want to be neither an unthinking autocrat nor an unthinking democrat. You don't want to lead in the blind conviction that you and only you are right, but neither do you want to lead by following the majority. (It is not easy to be a good and inspiring leader. For me, the middle path is the best way as demonstrated by the statement above. There are times when you need to be an autocrat and there are times you need to be a democrat.)
3. If you mean to make a difference in the world or in your company, you cannot wait for others to begin the change, and you cannot wait even for your own changes to become widespread, let alone universal. Begin the project, no matter how ambitious, with yourself. Begin now. (Just do it!)
4. Do not hesitate to set perfection as the goal of your organisation, but, in so doing, you must also recognize that only imperfection will move you and your enterprise toward that goal. For this reason, never criticize imperfection. Nurture it. Exploit it. Manage it. It is the fuel that drives every worthwhile endeavor.
5. It is never a good leadership strategy to ignore potential problems, to fail to evaluate risks, to willfully refuse to anticipate pitfalls, or to turn your back on contigency planning. However, it is an invariably fatal strategy to allow the anticipation of trouble to paralyze you or your enterprise.
6. The best attitude is to embark with the expectation of success, not failure. (Plan for the worse, hope for the best!)
7. A complex business enterprise cannot be run on forced obedience. Voluntary cooperation - self-direction toward common goals - is required, and it is the task of CEOs and managers to secure it day by day. (Important question to ask ourself is does your employees believe in what they are doing? Do they feel they belong to the organisation and will do their best to uphold the company's good reputation? I have seen this in some companies and that would be the task of any CEOs or managers that ultimately, their employees are proud of what they are doing and also the company)
8. An organization built on coercion is designed to collapse.
9. Businesses do no business with other businesses; people do business with people. Treat everyone with respect, render everyone fair value for value received, and those people will return to you time and again.
10. An effective manager ensures that each worker understands not just the assigned task, but what that task contributes to the greater "commonwealth" - i.e. the company.
11. The best-run companies are characterized by individual pride and satisfaction in doing excellent work toward common goals that pervade the entire organization.
12. Whatever else Gandhi's campaign to abandon caste was, it was a call for each person to strive to earn a worthwhile identity through hard work, noble service, and necessary sacrifice. These constitute virtue, and virtue, in turn, constitutes moral identity. This lesson applies in any field of endeavor.
13. The will of the majority, he held, must not cancel the vote of the minority; however, where "there is no principle involved and there is a programme to be carried out, the minority has got to follow the majority. But where there is a principle involved, the dissent stands, and it is bound to express itself in practice when the occasion arises."
14. In any collaborative endeavor, if everyone is thinking alike, no one is really thinking. (Dissenting views are not evil and rejected outright. What is important is how we manage it)
15. The CEO cannot afford to neglect the human capital of the enterprise. Whether you make shoes or sell stocks, every business is first and foremost a people business.
16. The ideal toward which any CEO should lead his company is a productive, profitable existence without him and, indeed, without any central authority.
17. A CEO's effectiveness can be measured by the degree to which she renders her presence optional to the organization. The best leaders lead to become unnecessary. (Not easy to emulate in real life situation. It requires the person to have strong confidence in his own abilities so that he is confident enough to make himself unnecessary)
18. Accept the past as a teacher, but remember that the measure of a successful teacher is the number of students who rise above his example, and the very greatest teachers are those who produce students much greater than themselves.
19. "A foolish consistency," Emerson (Ralph Waldo Emerson) wrote, "is the hobgoblin of little minds." Emerson did not scorn consistency, but only foolish consistency - consistency for the consistency's sake, that serves no rational and valuable purpose.
20. The great leadership issue, therefore, is one of navigation: the creation of purposeful, productive movement within an environment of movement.
21. An organization should be more than the sum of its people, just as a viable government must be more than the sum of its leaders.
22. "History shows that all reforms have begun with one person."
23. A leader earns his stripes every day.
24. Gandhi taught that leadership is not a title or an official position, but rather a way of life, and life is lived when you are in company as well as when you are in solitude.
25. To avoid escalation and bring about amelioration, begin by making an effort to understand the motives behind the behavior you wish to change.
26. The most successful generals are those who never allow the enemy to select the battlefield. To do so yields a significant advantage, often both strategically and tactically. Similarly, the most successful CEOs never allow their company to be forced to compete on someone else's terms. The surest way to win is to play to your strengths. The surest way to lose is to play to the strengths of your competition.
27. ..... the effective CEO devises means of persuasion that demonstrate a benefit to all, including all those who take different sides in a dispute.
28. Winning is not about the gratification of the ego - "bragging rights" - but about doing the best you can for your organization. (Actually, it is not about winning. It should be about doing what is best for the organization)
29. Restraint is the surest mark of true leadership power. Compliance won is always more effective - and far easier to sustain - than compliance coerced.
30. Provided that you dream ambitiously enough, the approach - not the attainment - defines success.
31. Leadership requires the exercise of judgment. To surrender judgment to principle, policy, or ideology is to surrender leadership itself.
32. Serve people, not ideas. This is the one item of ideology that is of unfailing value to all, at all times.
33. If your destination is a mile away, you would be foolish to refuse to take the first step just because that single step did not span the entire mile. (To take small steps is very important in any endeavour even if that step may not be in the right direction. With wrong steps, at least you found out the right direction and starts walking towards your goal)
34. Blame achieves nothing; whereas taking responsibility lets you take command by identifying those aspects of a transaction, a project, or a problem that are under your control or on which you can act. Assigning blame is almost always valueless, whereas taking responsibility offers great value insofar as it empowers you to act productively.
35. Make it your business to identify discontent among all your customers, external and internal, and among your potential customers - the segment of the market you have yet to penetrate. Having found it, explore it, embrace it, and work with it. Let discontent drive the innovation of your enterprise.
36. Never let yourself be boxed in or your subject limited by a question posed to you. Don't evade the question or withhold an answer. Instead, remake, rework, and redefine the question so that you can give the fullest, most useful, and most accurate answer possible - an answer that delivers the greatest value to the questioner, to you, and to your enterprise.
37. Battles must be chosen with the same care as that devoted to choosing anything costly. Squandering your treasure and your time on a cheap battle is no way to lead your enterprise to prosperity or to assert yourself as an effective CEO. Before you embark on a dispute, consider that, win or lose, you will incur costs.
38. A creative, productive enterprise requires individually creative, productive people who routinely contribute their individuality to achieve common goals, yet do not yield their individual responsibility. The only viable leadership path for such an organization is that of noncoercive example.
39. The CEO who merely bemoans the existence of competitors in a crowded market deserves the failure to which he dooms his enterprise. An effective business leader, on the other hand, is always thankful for competitors because their existence makes his enterprise competitive.
40. One of Gandhi's favorite American writers, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote that "nothing great is ever accomplished without enthusiasm." (I am a great believer in this. If you hate your job, it is time to look for a new job)
41. A corollary to the smell test is the following rule of thumb: If a proposed course of action requires elaborate rationalization, there is probably something wrong with it. Ethical and ethically profitable ideas are generally capable of the most elegantly simple presentation, whereas ethically dubious ideas usually call for long-winded exercises in tortured logic. (Good to remember this to detect dubious schemes)
42. The ideal motivational talk marries head to heart, and the best way to do this is to present ideas, objectives, and goals that, in themselves, join together intellect and emotion. A genuinely inspiring program embodies inherently inspiring values and, therefore, readily lends itself to a motivational presentation that is both intellectually cogent and emotionally compelling.
43. Gandhi's great innovation in conducting revolutionary change was to regard the powers that be, in so far as they do wrong, to be suffering from ignorance, not evil intentions. The appropriate response to ignorance is education, not retaliation.
In summary, Gandhi has shown us a sustainable approach to leadership and it has withstood the acid test of time. Unlike modern approach which focuses on short-term rewards which is often accompanied with catastrophic failure in the long-term (e.g. financial crisis of 2008), the guiding principle of leadership should always be to serve society with honesty and sincerity. This would never go wrong.
