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No Way Out But

Dec 15 2002

No Way Out But

Written by Balaji Pasumarthy

Sunday, 15 December 2002

There is a sate of mind, which is most conducive for path breaking work, for individuals as well as teams. A leader’s role is to achieve this for himself and his team.

There are a whole host of management techniques, strategies and methodologies. TQM, CRM, Reengineering. Guerrilla Warfare, Market dominance, Niche Marketing and what not. Each one of them seems to be a panacea for a lot of problems but success is not assured for all who might implement them. At the same time there are businesses, which are very successful, and the management might not be even aware of the latest management buzzwords. So what accounts for success? Some might attribute it to “kismath,” fate or luck. But such a conclusion is not really helpful. I believe there is a state of mind, which is conducive for success. Here I am not referring to IQ, experience or knowledge that a person might have, these are all enabling factors but not the most important. The most important factor is to have a mind, which has accepted a situation and reconciled to the fact that the only way out is to make it a success. This state frees the mind to focus on solving a problem what ever be the odds and whatever be the constraints.

The most common example to illustrate this is the 1st few days of a child going to school. It is a common site to see children crying when they are first introduced to school. An alien environment and the removal of comfort zones can be disturbing to adults leave alone children. The first few days in the kindergarten children would be crying and obviously very little learning takes place. The teachers would typically be spending time consoling and cajoling children to stop crying. Some might stop crying because of an incentive of a chocolate, but the mind is on the chocolate and not in the school. Slowly the child accepts the school as part of her routine. Something she cannot escape from, something she needs to live with and make the most out of. Once this stage sets in the crying stops and the mind is free from the problem of “how do I go home?” The mind is more open to finding out what is happening at school.

Switch to a business environment, to a mind which is not happy with the job, one is looking for a new job, a new assignment basically an escape. The boss might motivate, announce an incentive or threaten dire consequence for not performing. Work will get done but would it be the best? Would it be work, which makes for success? As the odds rise won’t the quest for escape become even stronger and when the business really needs total involvement a key resource might actually call it quits.

A mind that however is totally content with its present status and situation is more likely to apply itself to the job. By contentment I do not mean status quo with respect to performance, the mind is content to apply itself whole heartedly to the current problem, job or situation. The mind is not focused on escape whatever be the difficulties that come in the way.

It is the leader’s, entrepreneur’ and each individual’s role to consciously get into this state of mind which I call “No way out” because then the mind’s only solution is to find a solution and make the situation a success. This is the state of mind, which ensures total commitment to the task whether things are going well or not.

Sumantra Ghoshal talks of an even more powerful state of mind, and uses the term Volition to describe it. It is a much more than motivation, the mind does not work for any tangible reward, and it works because of a sense of commitment. A state of mind like Gandhiji had when he decided in South Africa to root out colour discrimination, a firm commitment “to root out the disease and suffer hardship in the process.” A mind in this state is unstoppable, and we have seen it in the case of others like Mother Teresa.

In a more practical sense the mind needs to be in a state, which clearly accepts the present challenge and wants to find a solution in a focused and committed manner.

The process for getting into this stage is purely by the process of introspection or by a process of surrender. For self driven people through the process of introspection one consciously goes through all the mental debate of an escape route, and eliminates each of the escape routes and accepts the present situation as the best and then tunes in to job, assignment or the business on hand. The mind by a process of elimination comes to the conclusion that this is the best opportunity available and one needs to make the best out of it. This whole process needs to be done in a systematic and focused manner. Rather than having the thought of escape spoil once performance over months together it better that the mind dwells on the various alternatives fully and completely in a very short time. I have found this useful when dealing with my team too. If someone in the team shows signs of discontentment, I help the person out by laying the structure for introspection. What are the persons long term goal, does the job fit with it, are there any better jobs around, can the present set of responsibilities be changes to fit the persons style and aspiration. I would even ask the team member to take two days off and do a through introspection and come back. It is much better than to have a dissatisfied player in the team.

The process of surrender is a process by which a person has blind faith in a leader or a company. This is another method to get into a state of acceptance. I however do not know how this is done, but have witnessed it happen by spiritual gurus and some leaders in business.

This focused state of mind is the most conducive for results, it will find solutions without resources, it will create opportunities when none existed and it will solve problems, which seemed insurmountable. The greatest resource that any organisation can have is a mind that is totally committed to it.

This focused mind however has its pitfalls too. It might mean that the mind has developed a tunnel vision and some obvious opportunities might get missed out merely because the mind was content with its present set of activities. How then to avoid this mind trap is another topic all to gether.

(TheAuthoris Balaji Pasumarthy the ChiefCatalystof businessgyan, his areas of interest are business strategyand innovation. For feed-back and more infor-mation send mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it )\n This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it )"