Excellence can never
come from extremism; for, excellence involves balance, freedom and empathy.
Excellence built through use of force, fear and coercion stands on a weak foundation,
waiting to crumble under its own weight. History stands testimony to this.
Asoka, the greatest
king of ancient India, set out to conquer Kalinga. In his quest for
awesomeness, he waged the bloodiest of wars and won spectacularly. The great
king realized the futility of earning peoples’ trust through violence. After
seeing the bloodshed and destruction he caused, he changed his policy from bheri-gosha (call of war) to dhamma-gosha (call for righteousness) . Dharma and ahimsa earned him true and
enduring excellence.
In modern world
history, Hitler’s vision to establish supremacy of the Aryan race and ‘Lebensraum’ took him to extreme measures,
leading to WW II and the holocaust.
On the contrary, MK
Gandhi believed that ends and means are inextricably linked. Even when he could
have commanded brute force of multitude of Indians, he chose to pursue freedom
through peaceful means.
More close to our
actual lives, the organizations we work for, where we spend more time than in
our homes, how should excellence be measured? If employees are the crucial asset of an
organization, shouldn’t the health, happiness and well being of employees be a measure
of organization’s excellence?
For all the need for
creativity, out-of–the-box thinking and for building ‘tomorrow’s enterprise’,
employee-happiness is indispensable.
When transfer policies
are harsh, work from home is disallowed; and the HR is not helpful and management
is more concerned about revenue and stock price, the employee-satisfaction
becomes incidental. Employee-happiness is sacrificed at the altar of organizational
excellence. This kind of organization-excellence might make Karl Marx’s
concept of ‘alienation’ of worker come true. This form excellence at the cost
of employee is neither sustainable nor desirable.
