Varna management

At midnight, when usually you would see some programmers or testers  burning their midnight oil, to the surprise of everybody, managers were around. It looks like all were working hard but nobody has a clue what they want to achieve.

“I hate when senior leadership changes. The entire way of working changes and creates so much of unnecessary work”, one manager said for whom his wife’s final ultimatum to reach home has already past 1 hour.

While he is now sensitive about the fact that his team members have been working late nights almost everyday since past several weeks. “Every new leader comes tries to show their identity and feels, without changing the the existing structure there is no way they can make the things better”, another leader said who had no clue what he is doing in office.

At that moment Shambu the oldest employee and a very serious looking manager came and said, “Hey Som and Altaf have already progressed a lot. Why not we all sit with them and understand how they are doing. Then we can finish that.”.

They all went rushing to the meting room were Som and Altaf were sitting. They were projecting their work on to the screen.

Shambhu asked to explain their understanding and Altaf obliged.

“There are four categories by which we have to divide our employees. These categories are called varna.

There are four Varnas: Bipra, Khsatriya, Vyashya, Sudra.

Sudra:  Employees who are unconditional followers and excel only through respect or fear.

Vyashya: Employees who are conditional followers and excel if they see personal gain in doing any activity.

Khsatriya: Employees who are conditional leaders. Who act and can successfully lead a group when they see a personal gain of power or going to a higher designation due to the act. may be long term.

Bipra: Employees who are unconditional leaders. Who irrespective of designation, power continues to lead others in right direction. These employees need complete freedom to operate and show their best.”

“Ohh my god!!! This guy must be crazy. He is trying to implement jati pratha (caste system) in a software company. Has he goes crazy. He can be sued for telling this”. One of the managers said.

Som clarified, “There is a big difference between jati and varna. Jati or caste system is because of your birth to a particular family. This was a easier and faulty system developed to identify people who must work as intellectuals, warriors, businessmen and services.

Varna system is by your nature and this is more accurate.

These social systems or any social system is not bad if you understand the intention behind the formation of the systems. It’s the faulty and rigid implementation by some selfish people which as caused the harm. Anyway, I don’t see anything wrong in this exercise. We do various personality tests in office during training and if organization can utilize them rightly to take decisions on who should work in what kind of task it will make more sense to the employee, organization and those tests”.

Altaf said, “You find so much difficulty in convincing self, management and employees while choosing leaders. This will help you.

A true Bipra definitely a leader material but should not be leading a group which has a short term critical goal to achieve. These people will always use their own intellect and are not good followers. Give them projects, explain them the urgency, give them respect, they will return with dramatic results. These people are extremely successful in innovation and research activities.

A true Ksatriya is definitely a good leader. Put him during crisis and once things are settled you put them in to another team where there is crisis. They are good at war time situations. At peace time they may hurt people and organization for their selfish motive.

A true Vaishyay is a great performer. But they must understand why they are doing a certain task. Once they understand they will do their best. Many a times they will come up with innovative and time saving techniques to do one task. They need frequent appreciations and rewards else they will leave you for a better job very quickly.

A true Sudra is the most loyal and trustworthy employee. They perform as directed. Never deviate their attention. But you need to continuously mentor them to get better from them. They are not self driven but if you guide them they will do wonders.”

“Interesting!!! Let’s work on the exercise as it makes sense now. We will first tag people by our first impression and then debate to confirm if those tagging are accurate. Thank you Som and Altaf. Hopefully this new leadership stays for sometime and we don’t have to do all these things all over again differently”, Shambhu said

Som obliged and said, “When senior management changes or leadership changes you feel uncomfortable not because new leaders ask difficult or irrelevant questions. It is because they ask different questions and take us out of monotony. Doing the same thing and expecting to get extraordinary result is impossible. New leaders come to improve things not maintain things at the same level. We all try to create our social comfort zone and settle there when things do not change for sometime. The discomfort comes when somebody breaks our social comfort zone.”

Others nodded their head and left the room.

 

Namaste!!!

 

– Stray Dog