CORPORATE SUFI : Achieving balance in the corporate sphere

        Balance is an approach to life. It is a quality of doing. It extends to all we do and all the roles we perform both in the personal and the work sphere.

In an organisation, the physical dimension is expressed in economic terms. The mental or psychological dimension deals with the recognition, development, and use of talent. The social and emotional dimension has to do with human relations and how people are treated. The spiritual dimension deals with finding meaning through purpose or contribution and through organisational integrity.

When an organisation neglects any one or more of these areas it negatively impacts the entire organisation. In their excellent book, In search of Excellence Tom Peters and Robert Waterman Jr. identified eight characteristics of excellent companies:

(1) They have a bias toward action.

(2)They stay close to their customers. The love of product and customer is palpable.

(3)They encourage autonomy and entrepreneurship. They break production down into small components and encourage each to think independently and competitively. They allow for some chaos in return for quick action and regular experimentation.

(4)They pursue productivity through people. All employees’ best efforts are essential, and they will share in the company’s rewards. .

(5)They’re hands on, value-driven. They insist that executives keep in touch with the firm’s essential business.

(6)They stick to their knitting. They avoid straying into unrelated fields, but remain in the business the company knows best.

(7)They keep the staff lean and the corporate structure simple. They operate with few administrative layers and few people at upper layers.

(8)They’re brilliant on the basics. They combine dedication to central values with tolerance for all employees who accept those values.

In an HBR article on ‘How Great Companies Think Differently”, the author Rosabeth Moss Kanter gives the example of the Mahindra Group, an Indian multinational conglomerate with operations in over in 100 countries.

Like many emerging-market enterprises, the Mahindra Group operates in many industries, including automobiles, finance, IT, and several others. And like the great companies, it invests in creating a culture based on a common purpose to provide coherence amidst diversity, proclaiming that it is “many companies united by a common central value—to enable people to rise.”