Excellence - through any means ?

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.