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Writer's picturerajeevaranjan

Beware! Emotions and feelings control the business


It is felt that business decisions are mostly rational after lots of data analysis efforts are put in. On the surface, this may seem so, but when we go into deeper depth, nothing can be farther from the truth.


Analysts fail to appreciate the fact that the businessman or the enterprise owner is not a robot, but a human being with flesh and blood. Her mindset, perception, and assumption play a great role in all the decision-making that she does, day in day out. She has her own preferences over that of the people, whom she does not like. Managers are also human beings, who are not always driven by what is beneficial to the enterprise, but what is beneficial to them in an individual way. They are also driven by the emotions of hurt, greed, anger, and fear leading to competition with colleagues for promotion, jealousy with peers, the sub ordinates not giving respect as expected, which plays as much a role in their decision making than the hard facts do. The ego, a lot of times, plays a larger role in decision-making than what people mostly think.


Despite the management manuals and books talking about the people being the best asset of the enterprise, the way people are treated at different levels in an enterprise shows the double standard prevalent in most of the enterprises as what they speak and what they do. Most of the companies across the world take culture as an external showpiece than a way of life.


A good culture demands that what we think and plan, what we do, and what we speak must be aligned. But culture is only in theory. The practicality of business has its own demand. People of my generation may recall the US energy giant M/s ENRON, who fell from the mountain into the pacific sea. Enron claimed honesty, integrity, and transparency as their value system being followed. The fact that both CEO and CFO were found guilty of more than 50 counts of corruption and loss of integrity charges proved otherwise about the operations. It is obvious that personal greed was heavier than the cultural value system spoken about in the company presentations. Readers may appreciate that with a bad culture, even a profit-making multi-billion-dollar company can go bankrupt, leaving a huge trail of destruction for individuals and corporations.


If India has to take its rightful place in the business world, it is imperative that business culture and human values become the top priorities of the country. But this is easier said than done. Lots need to be done before we come to the equal of Germany, Switzerland or Japan. The culture and values need to become the priority, and not greed and profit alone.

It would have been far easier to bring back the culture had we not lost our value system as individuals or even society, by aping the westernized culture. Renunciation, and not accumulation, was the creed on which Indian society was based thousands of years back. Our respects went to people, who renounced and lived a simple life, not trying to prove themselves great.


The Indian companies can easily learn the value of culture if the individual employees of the company can be taught to understand themselves and their needs better. The idea is an internal exploration by the employees with less focus on external situations and the environment. The top management has to have a high value and ethics system themselves before the employees can be expected to show the same traits in their personality.

It is time for the industry to shift focus from recruiting, training, and placement to pick up people with the right attitude and values to bring Indian business to the top of the world.


The famous book #goodtogreat also advises us to pick up the right people in the enterprises and put them in the right place. Rest everything is automatically taken care of.


Thanks for reading till the end. Would be grateful for your comments and observations on my write-up.


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