Gandhi, CEO: 14 Principles to Guide & Inspire Modern Leaders

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. 

AND THAT"S THE WAY IT WAS.........

Was going through my old man's stuff and found a piece of old yellowed paper. Such inspirational words that it reminded me again why I chose this profession in the first place.

AND THAT'S THE WAY IT WAS..........

"Engineering. It is a great profession. There is the fascination of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings jobs and homes to men. Then it elevates the standards of living and adds to the comforts of life. That is the engineer's high privilege.

"The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his mistakes in the grave like doctors. He cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the lawyers. He cannot, like the architects, cover his failures with trees and vines. He cannot, like the politicians, screen his shortcomings by blaming his opponents and hope the people will forget. The engineer simply cannot deny he did it. If his works do not work, he is damned...

"... unlike the doctor his is not a life among the weak. Unlike the soldier, destruction is not his purpose. Unlike the lawyer, quarrels are not his daily bread. To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort, and hope. No doubt as years go by the people forget which engineer did it, even if they ever knew. Or some politician puts his name on it. Or they credit it to some promotor who used other people's money... But the engineer himself looks back at the unending stream of goodness which flows from his successes with satisfactions that few professions may know. And the verdict of his fellow professionals is all the accolade he wants."

-Herbert Hoover-

Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence

This book by the bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman is timely as I believe we are becoming the most distracted generation in recent history. With all the distractions presented by electronic gadgets such as smart phone, tablet, television, etc. and social media such as facebook, twitter, etc., focus has been become a rare commodity. I guess all of us are guilty of being distracted all the time and we may not realise that we are not living up to our full potential simply because we are easily distracted all the time. This book is timely as it shows us that focus is very important in all aspects of our life from working to personal relationship. It also shot down the myth on the importance of multi-tasking and shows us it is more important to be fully engaged at a particular task instead of juggling multiple balls and ended up dropping all the balls. I am a believer that focus is very important and in this age of distractions, the one who is able to stay focus and ignore the distractions will emerge triumphant.

 

 

Some excerpts from the book which I hope you will find useful in your journey towards being focus (and stop checking your facebook news) - words in blue are mine:

 

1) For leaders to get results they need all three kinds of focus. Inner focus attunes us to our intuitions, guiding values, and better decisions. Other focus smooths our connections to the people in our lives. And outer focus lets us navigate in the larger world. A leader tuned out of his internal world will be rudderless; one blind to the world of others will be clueless; those indifferent to the larger systems within which they operate will be blindsided.

 

2) Writing about the coming information-rich world, he (Nobel-winning economist, Herbert Simon) warned that what information consumes is "the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." (The challenge for us is to make use of appropriate information and not be swarmed by information overload)

 

3) ..... Rick Aberman, who directs peak performance for the Minnesota Twins baseball team, tells me, "When the coach reviews plays from a game and only focuses on what not to do next time, it's a recipe for players to choke." (It is always better to be positive than negative)

 

4) While mind wandering may hurt our immediate focus on some task at hand, some portion of the time it operates in the service of solving problems that matter for our lives.

 

In addition, a mind adrift lets our creative juices flow. While our minds wander we become better at anything that depends on a flash of insight, from coming up with imaginative wordplay to inventions and original thinking. In fact, people who are extremely adept at mental tasks that demand cognitive control and a roaring working memory - like solving complex math problems - can struggle with creative insights if they have trouble switching off their fully concentrated focus. (The key is knowing when to focus and when to relax. Relaxation of the mind is also important. The part of our brain for intensive focusing also needs a refreshing break)

 

5) Open time lets the creative spirit flourish; tight schedules kill it.

 

6) A random survey of thousands of people found focus in the here-and-now understandably was highest by far while they were making love (apparently even among those people who answered that badly timed inquiry from a phone app). A more distant second was exercising, followed by talking with someone, and then playing. In contrast, mind wandering was most frequent while they were working (employers take note), using a home computer, or commuting. (Sex is also good for the mind!)

 

7) At the neural level mind wandering and perceptual awareness tend to inhibit each other: internal focus on our train of thought tunes out the senses, while being rapt in the beauty of a sunset quiets the mind. This tune-out can be total, as when we get utterly lost in what we're doing.

 

8) Tightly focused attention gets fatigued - much like an overworked muscle - when we push to the point of cognitive exhaustion. The signs of mental fatigue, such as a drop in effectiveness and a rise in distractedness and irritability, signify that the mental effort needed to sustain focus has depleted the glucose that feeds neural energy.

 

9) Such restoration (attention restoration) occurs when we switch from effortful attention, where the mind needs to suppress distractions, to letting go and allowing our attention to be captured by whatever presents itself. But only certain kinds of bottom-up focus act to restore energy for focused attention. Surfing the Web, playing video games, or answering e-mail does not.

 

10) ..... our tone of voice matters immensely to the impact of what we say: research has found that when people receive negative performance feedback in a warm, supportive tone of voice, they leave feeling positive - despite the negative feedback. But when they get positive performance reviews in a cold and distant tone of voice, they end up feeling bad despite the good news.

 

11) Another antidote to groupthink: expand your circle of connection beyond your comfort zone and inoculate against in-group isolation by building an ample circle of no-BS confidants who keep you honest.

 

A smart diversification goes beyond gender and ethnic group balance to include a wide range of ages, clients, or customers, and any others who might offer a fresh perspective. (Go and meet people!)

 

12) "Sunlight", as Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter once said, "is the best disinfectant." (This statement refers to transparency as the best policy)

 

13) Epigenetics, the science of how our environment affects our genes, tells us that inheriting a set of genes is not in itself enough for them to matter. Genes have what amounts to a biochemical on/off switch; if they are never turned on we may as well not have them. The "on" switch comes in many forms, including what we eat, the dance of chemical reactions within the body, and what we learn.

14) Willpower emerged as a completely independent force in life success - in fact, for financial success, self control in childhood proved a stronger predictor than either IQ or social class of the family of origin. (Delayed gratification must be trained from young)

15) High self-control predicts not just better grades, but also a good emotional adjustment, better interpersonal skills, a sense of security, and adaptability.

16) Bottom line: kids can have the most economically privileged childhood, yet if they don't master how to delay gratification in pursuit of their goals those early advantages may wash out in the course of life.

17) Another bottom line: Anything we can do to increase children's capacity for cognitive control will help them throughout life.

18) The timing of the gesture interprets its meaning. If your timing is off, a positive statement can have negative impact.

19) Empathy entails an act of self-awareness: we read other people by tuning in to ourselves.

20) One cost of the frenetic stream of distractions we face today, some fear, is an erosion of empathy and compassion. The more distracted we are, the less we can exhibit attunement and caring.

21) As William Osler, the father of medical residency training, wrote in 1904, a doctor should be so detached that "his blood vessels don't constrict and his heart rate remains steady when he sees terrible sights." Osler recommended doctors have the attitude of a "detached concern."

22) The most robust entity takes in the greatest amount of relevant information, understands it most deeply, and responds most nimbly.

23) Smart practice always includes a feedback loop that lets you recognize errors and correct them - which is why dancers use mirrors. (We must always learn from our mistakes)

24) Positive emotions widen our span of attention; we're free to take it all in. Indeed, in the grip of positivity, our perceptions shift. As psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, who studies positive feelings and their effects, puts it, when we're feeling good our awareness expands from our usual self-centered focus on "me" to a more inclusive and warm focus on"we".

25) ...... positivity, in turn, has great payoffs for performance, energizing us so we can focus better, think more flexibly, and persevere. (Ever wondered why successful people are always positive? I don't think they are positive because they are successful but rather it is because they are positive that they became successful)

26) "You need the negative focus to survive, but a positive one to thrive," says Boyatzis. "You need both, but in the right ratio."

That ratio would do well to flip far more to the positive than the negative, in light of what's known as the "Losada effect," after Marcial Losada, an organizational psychologist who studied emotions in high-performing business teams. Analyzing hundreds of teams, Losada determined that the most effective had a positive/negative ratio of at least 2.9 good feelings to every negative moment (there's an upper limit to positivity: above a Losada ratio of about 11:1, teams apparently become too giddy to be effective). The same ratio range holds for people who flourish in life, according to research by Barbara Fredrickson, who is a psychologist at the University of North Carolina (and a former research associate of Losada). (A balance between negative and positve feelings is important and successful people is generally more positive)

27) Global economic data shows that once a country reaches a modest level of income - enough to meet basic needs - there is zero connection between happiness and wealth. Intangibles like warm connections with people we love and meaningful activities make people far happier than say, shopping or work.

28) Directing attention toward where it needs to go is a primal task of leadership. Talent here lies in the ability to shift attention to the right place at the right time, sensing trends and emerging realities and seizing opportunities. (Leaders take note. One of our main task is to keep the team focus and at the same time are attuned to others and the outside world)

29) Leadership itself hinges on effectively capturing and directing the collective attention. Leading attention requires these elements: first, focusing your own attention, then attracting and directing attention from others, and getting and keeping the attention of employees and peers, of customers or clients.

30) ...... "deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do."

31) "The most successful leaders are constantly seeking out new information," says Ruth Malloy, global director of Hay Group's leadership and talent practice.

32) ..... nonacademic abilities like empathy typically outweigh purely cognitive talents in the makeup of outstanding leaders. (We all know why academic abilities alone would not guarantee future success. So, remember to always hone your soft skills like empathy, communication, etc.)

33) Baron-Cohen's research finds that in a small - but significant - number of people this strength (excels at systems analysis) comes coupled with a blind spot for what other people are feeling and thinking, and for reading social situations. For that reason, while people with superior systems understanding are organizational assets, they are not necessarily effective leaders if they lack the requisite emotional intelligence.


In summary, the book is timely for this generation which are constantly distracted. When we say focus, it is not merely at work or the task at hand. It encompasses every aspects of our life. When we are focused on our relationship, the relationship would flourish and we would have meaningful and quality connections with the people we love and care about. If we are distracted, what we have would be superficial connections and it is therefore, not surprising if the relationship do not work out or we feel something is missing. The same thing applies to work, the environment, etc. In summary, we should FOCUS on things that matter in our life, work, etc. during our short adventure on earth and hope that when we leave, we would leave our mark here, in a positive manner of course.