Management History Through Ramayana

“History repeats itself”, this famous quote we have heard time and again, and we must have used it in different contexts, in this blog, the writer would like to put some light on the events that happened in history and link them with the management lessons we can learn and apply from our historical past.

Ramayana is one of the greatest epics we had, and we all have unearthed different stories through different timelines about its historical literature. Ramayana teaches us a lot of management lessons, a few of them are listed below,

1)Forming strategic alliances for mutual gains :

Sughriv was one of the personalities who made acquaintances with Lord Ram. Both lord ram and Sughriv were in exile and thus got acquainted with each other. Here lord ram promised sughriv that he would reinstate sughriv as vanar king by defeating Vali (Vali was the elder brother of Sughriv and ruler of the kingdom of Kishkindha. Therefore, a strategic alliance was formed for mutual gains.

2)Succession Planning :

There is nothing more crucial and critical than a situation where a leader leaves the organization and there is no one to fill the vacuum or gap which the leader has left behind. King Dashrath’s plan to make Lord Ram the ruler of the kingdom of Ayodhya was stalled by his queen Kaikayi who wanted to give the throne to Bharath (her biological son). Bharath was crowned as the king and lord ram was sent to exile. This is a case of poor succession planning.

In today’s world, major time and effort are given to identifying a critical position (leadership position) in the organization and recruiting capable and competent managers (potential leaders) for those positions.

3)Optimum resource utilization :

Lord Ram was a skilful manager, one of his skills was his experience of the way to reach Lanka. There were multiple thoughts which came to Lord Ram’s mind of reaching Lanka. Lord Ram meditated and later concentrated on only one solution, which was to build a bridge (Setu) on the sea to reach Lanka.

Lord Ram picked the right persons for the right job. These were Nal and Nila. Nal was the son of Vishwamitra (architect of god) while Nila was the son of Agnidev (Vanar chieftain in the army of Lord Ram).

Thus, Lord Ram had the right persons, Nal and Nila who were skilled in making the bridge and construction and manpower. This is a classic example of optimum utilization of resources. In almost all organizations resources are scarce. A skilful manager has the capability to gain maximum out of minimum.

To sum up, Indian history has so much stock of Management lessons, which is stored in our historical and religious books, only our system thinking perspective would unearth the timeless management history.