कर्मण्ये वाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन
मा कर्मफलहेतुर भूर मा ते संगोस्त्व अकर्मणि
These words from the Bhagavad Gita were first spoken by Lord Krishna to Arjuna at Kurukshetra. They roughly translate to: you contol your actions, but not their more remote consequences. So take the remote consequences off your mind, act, and fulfill your sacred destiny.
These words were also the theme of a corporate leadership development program I was at earlier this week. A bunch of successful and well-compensated executives spoke to us developees about how leadership is about service, about having a bias for action, and not obsessing about moving up the corporate ladder. Absolutely. Following the blockbuster success of Emotional Intelligence, Amazon is now selling a book on Spiritual Intelligence.
Yeah, right…but this program was not naïve. It recognized that the developees cared about money. After all, these were people in corporate jobs. The program advised setting very specific goals on how much wealth one wanted to build.
This advice, from Jack Weber at the Darden School in Virginia, was based on an interesting longitudinal study done by Harvard Business School. The study sampled a class of HBS MBAs at graduation. It asked the graduates to rate how much they cared about money on a scale of 1-10. It also asked them how much they thought their net worth would be in 5, 10 and 15 years. The answer to the second question could also be “don’t know”. The study then went back and measured the net worth of these graduates in 5, 10 and 15 years. The finding was that the first question had no predictive power: the MBAs all cared about making money. The second question was a strong predictor of future net worth, with the people who didn’t know what they would be worth performing even worse than those who had put down modest targets. As an aside, I would love to know if the students with the highest wealth expectations also had the highest variance in wealth outcomes, because of having made lower probability bets (I couldn’t locate this study through googling).
A third perspective on careers that emerged came not from the faculty but from a fellow developee, chatting after work. Her boss had told her, “Our company is an ocean with many currents running through it. The key to success is to find a current that will become as big as the Gulf Stream, and to ride it.” This makes even more sense if company were replaced by industry or society. Some realpolitick here: how does one respond to mundane work that moves the company forward, but is unlikely to grow into a career-enhancing Gulf Stream?
Maybe staying sane is about balancing these perspectives. Or maybe it is about these elements coming together: ride the Gulf Stream to get wealthy, which enables the generosity of spirit needed to think in terms of मा कर्मफलहेतुर भूर.
2 comments:
This is a rich rich topic. After a lifetime of having thought of Geeta Saar as an unsolvable paradox (why would I do my best if I didn't care about outcomes?), I have made my peace with it and actually come to realize the wisdom and the truth behind it.
Essentially, I have come to realize the lack of causality in life. Or, said another way, there is so much causality that events are actually random. So if one does not control outcomes, why do anything? That question actually misses the point. Doing is primal. I recently heard this paraphrasing from someone from "My Conversations with God". We believe in the Have-Do-Be linkage. If I have money, I will retire and play golf and then I'll be happy. Actually the linkage is Be-Do-Have. You have to make a decision to be happy. Then from that place you do things which allow you to have what you want. Makes sense. And so much simpler.
So back to Geeta Saar: If we get attached to outcomes, we don't do our best. In golf, I hit my best shots when I forget what I am doing. So the reward is in the act itself. Doing things that we consider unpleasant in order to get something, is the fundamental source of pain. I know I reflexively subject myself to that process. But I am getting wiser.
Hi Vikas...I like thinking of the Geeta as an unsolvable paradox.
My take is that all great spiritual works (and works of art) are essentially rosarch tests. They are meant to be open to very different interpretations. Else, they would be neither broad nor durable. Your interpretation says a lot about who you are, and where your life is at...but no interpretation is either entirely right or wrong. The Geeta, the Koran and the Tao Te Ching are all what you make of them.
Coming back to the Geeta's words...If we get attached to outcomes, we don't do our best. If we don't care enough about outcomes, we don't do our best either.
For example, that jackass Sadagoppan Ramesh was born with enough talent to be up there with Dravid and Tendulkar. He just couldn't work up the intensity of desire/ passion/ ambition/ commitment needed to fulfill his talent. And if you disagree about Ramesh, we can find many other examples that illustrate the point.
The magic seems to be in caring deeply about the outcome. Both emotionally and in very specific strategic/ cognitive terms. And then getting that caring and those outcomes out of the system and proceeding into action with a clear, detached mind.
Where does all that emotion and that visualizing of the outcome go when you take it out of the system?
That is probably why my favourite Harry Potter gadget is the Pensieve. I want a Pensieve into which I can empty my desire and passion before I act. And I want to be able to load those desires and passions back into the mind when I need energy and motivation, when I'm looking for the heart to come thundering in again to bowl one more over.
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