The Enlightened Manager

Can we truly manage others without first understanding ourselves? This is the question at the heart of 'The Enlightened Manager', a book that takes an unconventional approach to management by drawing on the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti, widely regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age.

Both authors were profoundly impacted by Krishnamurti's teachings which emphasise self-knowledge, transformation and inquiry.

Vishwanath Aluri, a serial tech entrepreneur who founded IMImobile (acquired by Cisco in 2021), now serves as Secretary of the Krishnamurti Foundation India, where he leads efforts in education rooted in self-awareness and human transformation.

His co-author, Harry Eyres, previously a Financial Times columnist, once described Krishnamurti as "the most radical thinker he had engaged with." He regularly visits the Krishnamurti Centre at Brockwood Park in the UK for quiet retreats.

Together, they examine contemporary management issues through this unique lens. The result is much more than a business book, it's an exploration that challenges how we think about the connections between work, leadership, and life. The wisdom of The Enlightened Manager is accessible to managers of all backgrounds and belief systems.

Krishnamurti's Legacy

Jiddu Krishnamurti famously dissolved the Order of the Star, an organisation built around him in 1929, declaring that "truth is a pathless land" and rejecting the role of messiah that had been prepared for him since childhood. He spent the rest of his life teaching that wisdom cannot be handed down from guru to disciple but must be discovered through one's own direct perception and inquiry. It is this unique approach that the authors bring to bear on the practical challenges of modern management.

The Wisdom of Panna: Krishnamurti's Voice

The book uses an innovative approach though a virtual character known as Panna, which is presented as both a wise farmer from Aluri's village and as a voice emanating from a dashboard avatar. The device works because it models the book's core philosophy: wisdom isn't something borrowed from outside but discovered through one's own inquiry and perception.

As such, Panna is more than a narrative device, he's a conduit for Krishnamurti's wisdom, translating philosophical insights into accessible, practical guidance. Panna also embodies

Krishnamurti's rejection of the guru-disciple relationship. He’s positioned as a "sounding board" who asks the right questions, encouraging readers to discover wisdom through their own inquiry.

In a discussion about understanding the minds of others Panna says: "First of all you must observe your own minds, and your own hearts, and your own existence, your daily life as you live it... understanding the operations of the mind... essentially form the consciousness or the whole psychological structure of the human being".

"If you raise a question by yourself, then you need to discover the answer for yourself," Panna explains. In other words, the question becomes more important than the answer. This echoes Krishnamurti's rejection of the guru-disciple relationship and his insistence that truth cannot be handed down from teacher to student.

The Inner Dimension of Management

If managers cannot understand their own minds, how can they understand - let alone manage - the minds of others? This deceptively simple question is central to the book. It's a question that cuts through the traditional management literature's focus on frameworks, KPIs, and leadership styles. The authors are not interested in offering another methodology. The question is whether any methodology can work without self-awareness as its foundation.

Coffee Darshan

The book introduces the concept of "Coffee Darshan." Darshan is a Sanskrit term meaning "vision" or "seeing" and can be used to describe an audience with a guru or individual considered to be a divine being. But here, it's repurposed as a suggested workplace practice of looking inward within one's own consciousness. The authors propose that it can be done on one’s own, with a colleague or with the team. In our always-on culture, a permission to pause, dig deeper and observe one's own state of mind.

The Tool of Negation

Rather than defining good management, "the tool of negation" or identifying what management is NOT is proposed in The Enlightened Manager. This approach has its roots in what’s known as via negativa or "negative way”. This holds that we can only find the truth by stripping away what is false. By negating the “false”, managers can arrive at a clearer understanding of the essence of what’s really true.

"The authors argue that by negating the ‘technical component’ of the role, that a manager can uncover the far more critical ‘non-technical component’: the actual state of their own mind."

The Mirror of Relationship

“Life does not exist outside of relationship," Panna observes. Every interaction at work acts as a mirror, reflecting our own character, habitual behaviors...” This requires a state of heightened awareness; one must be present to how the mind responds in the

moment. This is fundamental to effective management because it’s only in this mirror that we truly begin to see our true selves and understand our hidden conditioning and connection with others.

The Krismnamurti Lens on AI

In a particularly timely section, the book addresses artificial intelligence through a Krishnamurtian lens. In our podcast it was explained that Krishnamurti spoke about AI in the 1970s and 80s, and his insights remain relevant. The fundamental limitation, Aluri explained is in the word itself: "Artificial intelligence cannot read in-between the lines."

In Chapter 9, Brain and Computer, Panna elaborates: "It's that natural intelligence that a manager has to use in his day-to-day function of dealing with this team and colleagues."

The book explains that just as a programmer isn’t flustered by a software glitch because they know the code, that managers can help themselves to remain calm in a crisis by understanding the "source code" of their own conditioning. The manager must understand the "source code" of the human mind, and this is something that AI cannot replicate.

Self-Knowledge versus Self-Knowing

One of the book's subtler distinctions is between the concepts of self-knowledge or self-knowing. Self-knowledge is accumulated wisdom about one's past behaviour - useful, but inherently backward-looking.

Self-knowing is something different and is referred to as “native intelligence” in the book. This is living awareness of the presence of oneself in the now. These concepts echo Buddhist mindfulness and other contemplative traditions. But here they are applied directly to the challenges of management.

As noted in the book: “First you see the outer things and from there go inward, watch how the mind is responding to the outer. This going inward from outward is the thread of relationship that exists between the two... This awareness is from moment to moment and exists throughout one’s life".

Self-knowing is an awareness of one's current state of mind as opposed to a snapshot of past experiences and patterns. "Without this self-knowing," Panna warns, "a manager or an entrepreneur is like a blind person moving along the journey without being aware he or she is blind."

This distinction gets to the heart of Krishnamurti's teaching: that transformation comes not from accumulating knowledge, but from the direct, moment-to-moment awareness of how our own consciousness works.

The Book of Learned Experience

When asked about the proliferation of management books when I chatted with him, Aluri was characteristically direct: "I'm saying please read the book of life inside you, not the book of someone outside. Ultimately, I'm only bringing it to yourself." This echoes Krishnamurti and his insistence that the truth is to be found through direct observation of one's own consciousness.

Shared Inquiry

A distinguishing feature about The Enlightened Manager is that it has not been written to give advice. In our What Matters podcast, Aluri said to me “who are we to give advice?” This isn't false modesty but a coherent philosophical position. Like Krishnamurti, who rejected the role of guru and insisted people must discover truth for themselves, the emphasis is on the art of questioning. "In life also, you must have the right approach. The right approach is the right questioning," intervenes Panna in one discussion in the book.

The Challenge to Readers

The Enlightened Manager doesn't promise to make you a better leader in 30 days. What it does offer is more difficult to define: an inner path to genuine self-understanding as the basis for managing others.

Attempting to translate Krishnamurti's profound insights into practical management wisdom is an ambitious project. Does it succeed? Absolutely! As long as you're willing to entertain the idea that effective management lies in understanding and developing your own consciousness. As such, it offers a rare and valuable gift - not answers, but the importance of the right questions.

The book is dedicated to “To the Friend on the Bench (which is how the authors frequently refer to Jiddu Krishnamurti in the text) who shared the light... and to all those who seek to understand the mind." It’s for "all those who happen to read it with no expectations and preconceptions, and to those who happen to read it with expectations and preconceptions but are ready to examine their own expectations and preconceptions."

The Enlightened Manager asks readers to bring not just their attention, but their willingness to question everything they think they know about management - including the questioner. By turning inquiry back on itself and examining not just what we think but how we think. By looking at not just what we perceive, but who is doing the perceiving, a new level of conscious awareness can emerge.

In a field dominated by solutions, here’s a management book that insists the work begins within. Therein lies both the challenge and promise for managers willing to embark on their own journey of self-discovery.

Together Aluri and Eyres invite readers not to just become better managers, but to become more conscious human beings. The Enlightened Manager offers something new: an invitation to genuine self-inquiry at a time when the world really needs it.