Vish Alluri: The Enlightened Manager

Nicola Hunt: (0:00 - 0:38)

Today's conversation is going to be different. We're diving into something deep, the question of whether we can truly manage others without first understanding ourselves. My guest is Vish Alluri, co-author of ‘The Enlightened Manager', a book that takes an unconventional approach to management by drawing on the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti.

Vish, welcome to What Matters. Thank you. Why do you believe it is so important to question deeply and contemplate?

Vish Alluri: (0:39 - 0:53)

You see, there's something called the art of questioning. It is important because if you raise a question by yourself, then you need to discover the answer for yourself. So the question is very important - more than the answer.

Nicola Hunt: (0:54 - 1:08)

And can you explain a little bit about who was Krishnamurti and how this relates into the fabric of the book, which is about questioning and thinking deeply?

Vish Alluri: (1:08 - 2:20)

Krishnamurti was spotted by the Theosophical Society in 1909 in India, in Chennai. He was adopted by Annie Besant, an English woman who had come to India, who fought for India's freedom struggle. She was the president of the Theosophical Society. They were looking for the manifestation of the next Messiah. So he was identified as the person when he was just 14 years on Adyar beach and she sent him to England for education.

She formed the Order of the Star in the East. In the 1920s, there were around 40,000 members who used to meet every year. Then one fine morning, he just dissolved that Order of the Star.

He said, truth is a pathless land. He doesn't believe that organised religion, organised beliefs can lead man to truth. He left Theosophical Society in 1929. Then he went on his own, addressing the human beings. His teachings cover the whole field of human existence. Actually, it is about life. Management is also related to life. How you manage your life.

Nicola Hunt: (2:21 - 2:54)

And that's why I thought this conversation would be so interesting. The book argues that managers must understand their own minds first. And you, in fact, emphasise the relationship between the outer and inner worlds.

Why do you believe that self-understanding is so important? And how can this understanding change the relationship between a manager and the people in their team?

Vish Alluri: (2:54 - 3:49)

Yeah, first of all, management is about managing people. Managing people implies you need to understand their minds to manage them. A man is nothing but his mind, I think.

It is for you, for anybody to discover the truth. That's the truth of life. The inner dimension, the psychological structure is the man.

So if you want me to give an example, let us take driving on a highway. Obviously, you know where the brakes are, where the accelerator is. So you should know when you're pressing accelerator, you're pressing accelerator.

You should not be thinking you're pressing brakes but thinking accelerator. But in real life, there may be also a possibility that one may be pressing accelerator and the brakes simultaneously. Then it will cause friction.

Friction means the wear out of the engine. Your engine is the mind. So if you don't understand your mind, how will you understand the mind of others?

That is the question we are raising.

Nicola Hunt: (3:50 - 4:08)

And you also in the book reference two important key tools, the tool of negation and the mirror of relationship. Can you explain what these are and why you believe they're important for good management?

Vish Alluri: (4:08 - 5:13)

Yes. You see, the tool of negation is so important because you should know what you are doing and what you are not doing also. What you are not doing is the negation part of it. The lacuna in managing this process. So that you have to rule out the negation and the mirror of relationship is what you are doing, you should know why you are doing it. For instance, a man is going on a road.

He sees some 100 pound bill. Will you take it or will you hand it over to the man who has dropped it on the road or will you go and give to police station or will you pocket and go away? That is the mirror of relationship.

You can understand yourself how you are responding to that situation. Relationship is nothing but response of the mind. When you are doing a job, are you doing the job for the sake of name and fame or are you doing it as a livelihood or are you doing it for achieving something?

What are you doing, you should know that. You should be aware of this. That is the mirror of relationship I call it.

These two tools are very important because whole life your mirror of relationship is continuous. All the while you are related to something or other.

Nicola Hunt: (5:14 - 5:30)

Most managers are focused on targets and outcomes but you talk about the importance of slow motion for managers using a tennis ball analogy. What do managers miss when they're not watching the ball?

Vish Alluri: (5:30 - 6:15)

When you are trying to achieve something, outcome is not in your hand. What is in your hand is what you can do. What you can do is your inputs.

Your input should be the process. What is the input in the process? You have got to look at that, not the outcome.

When you say when you're caught in outcome, then attention is obviously on the outcome, not on the process. So like tennis, if the player is looking at where the ball is going to head towards but instead he loses the eye on the ball, then he is mis-hitting the ball. So eye on the ball is very important.

Similarly, eye on the ball is nothing but what you are doing. So essentially whatever you are doing, you can do your best only in that, not the outcome. Outcome is a subsequent thing, consequence.

Nicola Hunt: (6:16 - 6:28)

Can you explain what you mean by coffee darshan and why you recommend this? Do explain darshan for people who may not be familiar with that concept.

Vish Alluri: (6:28 - 7:57)

Yeah, I'll tell you. The word darshan has been very nicely described by Christopher Isherwood in his book, A Meeting by the River.

Darshan means exposing yourself to the holy vibes of a holy man or a deity. So that is darshan. Actually, people go to various pilgrimages to have the darshan of various gods and deities.

I am saying that, sir, you can go but actually real darshan is inside you. Inside you, please look at that. Darshan is observation.

The moment you observe yourself, you will be free of it. It is not that you have to do something extra. If you are able to observe it without any prejudice, without any contamination or appreciation, then you can be free of that particular stupidity.

So coffee darshan is a cultural habit. People tend to have a nice coffee in the morning, you know that, no? Morning coffee. You are free of all the obligations, you see yourself, you can go inward yourself or if you have a friend across the table, the friend can share whatever he is feeling inside. He will tell you - free-flowing conversation takes place. That pause in the day is very, very important for any manager if he has to work for 20, 30, 40 years.

How will you be refreshing yourself? You have to refresh yourself by taking a pause of 5 minutes or 10 minutes. It's not necessarily coffee. You can take a tea or you can take water, you can take any juice or anything. That's all right. Just a pause.

You see, as long as people are all the time caught up in the race, very soon you get worn out.

Nicola Hunt: (7:58 - 8:21)

I noticed that you were fairly blunt about your views on business schools when it comes to the teaching of management. Now, I know that you were clear that there are some things that business schools do very well, but there were other areas where you did take exception. What is your main gripe?

Vish Alluri: (8:22 - 10:18)

You see, business schools, the problem is they talk of making the world a better place. How do you make the world a better place when you are internally diseased? Internally, you are having so many conflicts within you.

The conflicts within you will spread outside very soon. It's a matter of time. So, business schools are an extension of wrong education, according to me.

Education, it is mostly to get you a job and a means of livelihood. But the problem is if too much importance is attached to that and the means of livelihood has overtaken the life itself. Everything is around that only.

So, you should know the value of the knowledge, also the limitation of it. As long as you don't understand life itself, you don't understand the problem of life, the living, the problems of living. That is the other side of education that is missing in these business schools.

Having said that, there was a Dean of Harvard Business School. He conducted an interview of the alumni of Harvard Business School. He asked them what do they think is the most memorable thing in the business school life.

They said it's about branding and networking. So, business schools can provide jobs and these graduates do get some good reference deals through their connections, but they should make them aware it is only one side of it. Make them aware of all these issues.

You see, in business schools, what they do, if you have got environmental pollution controls and environmental problems - you are only introducing another module called environmental controls. You are not making the students aware of the relationship with the nature. Without going to the causes, you are giving symptomatic solutions.

You are saying you buy an electric car. You buy an electric car, but on the other hand, you are all the time spoiling the nature around you. So, you should have a relationship with nature.

That is important. If you don't do that, without addressing the causes, you are addressing only the effects. You are not really making them aware of the root causes of the problems.

Nicola Hunt: (10:19 - 10:45)

Yeah, and taking this one step further, you believe that business schools, in fact, have a role to play in helping students to understand that life is the whole and the job they do is only part of life and not the other way around. Are you going so far as to suggest that deans should consider embedding this concept in the culture of the business school?

Vish Alluri: (10:45 - 10:52)

Obviously, obviously. You see, unless you don't make them aware, your education is very incomplete, very fragmented. It's only one-sided.

Nicola Hunt: (10:53 - 11:06)

Returning to one of the central characters in the book, for you, what does Panna represent and should we all have our own Panna avatars?

Vish Alluri: (11:07 - 11:57)

No, Panna is actually a character I have created, a device to narrate whatever I want to say, because we are trying to deprecate the self. We don't want to be selfish. We don't project as I am saying it.

If it comes from somebody's voice, it is not that I am saying anything. So, we created a device called Panna. The name comes from Papanna. Papanna is about helping the good Samaritan. He is always helping people. So, I use the character Panna. Later on, I came to know after writing the book, Panna also means Prajna in Buddhism. Prajna is wisdom.

Nicola Hunt: (11:57 - 12:15)

Now, the book contains an interesting quote at the beginning, which I will read. Have you ever done anything spontaneously without being asked to do and without expecting anything in return? Why did you ask this question?

Vish Alluri: (12:16 - 13:07)

It is about life. You know, life, we don't do anything without expectation. That is the trouble.

Expectation means disappointment. That is the other side of the coin. The fact you have an expectation, it leads to disappointment.

Mitigate the problem of living by being aware of this. I have also mentioned in the first chapter, why of the book? In the spirit of bus pushers, there is only twice a day a bus comes from the district headquarters to the village. On some days, the bus doesn't start by itself. It is temperamental. So, villagers come and push the bus.

Spontaneity, human spontaneity is very, very important in life. You have to have spontaneity as a child. But what happened to the spontaneity as you have grown old?

So, we are talking of, have you ever done anything spontaneously without expecting anything in return? That means that life is a flowering life. It is not something you are in decay. You are all the time moving forward.

Nicola Hunt: (13:08 - 13:17)

Have you got any advice for our listeners to help them to go about doing something spontaneously?

Vish Alluri: (13:18 - 14:02)

No, first of all, you use the word advice. I don't use advice because that's also, there's a dialogue conversation in the book that this book is not about giving advice to anybody. Who are we to give advice?

Why should anybody take my advice? It's the fundamental thesis we have got. We don't give advice to anybody, but we share what we feel.

That's all. We are sharing what I honestly feel. Suppose you spontaneously get angry. So, I am saying that you be aware of that moment of your anger. You are not separate from your anger. You are the anger. You are not separate. But normally people miss out that particular thing. Human mind will always move spontaneously. But we have created so many obstacles and so many artificial things around we lose our spontaneity.

Nicola Hunt: (14:02 - 14:24)

And of course, this is the key thing that sets your book apart from other management books in that it's not a whole set of advice. The approach is that you pose the questions yourself and it's more questioning and contemplative in nature.

Vish Alluri: (14:25 - 15:02)

Yeah, life - you should have the right approach in life. It's not about the end result. If I give you the end result, I'll guarantee you this. I guarantee that. That is a very misleading thing. We don't know what will come out of that in the end.

So, like in mathematics, a student gets marks even if he doesn't get the right answer. But if he has the right approach, he gets the marks I'm told. Similarly in life also, you must have the right approach.

The right approach is the right questioning. So, what do you do? What do you get out of that? The right approach is keeping an eye on the ball. That is the right approach, not the end result. The end result will happen, but don't be caught in it, I'm saying.

Nicola Hunt: (15:03 - 15:18)

There are a huge number of management books to choose from and every day new management books are being published. What is your view on managers learning from management books?

Vish Alluri: (15:19 - 15:49)

You've got to understand what is the purpose of writing these books. First, you should go into the state of mind of the man who has written that book. If he has written it for achieving name and fame, you've got to understand all these facts.

Most of the management books I have come across, they've added a lot of spice in it. They're not real. They're not true facts. They're just spices. So, see, I'm saying you please read the book of life inside you, not the book of some book outside. Ultimately, I'm only bringing it to yourself. I'm not trying to give any extra formulas.

Nicola Hunt: (15:51 - 16:09)

My final question to you is on artificial intelligence, which is obviously a very major factor for managers currently and moving forward. What do you think that Krishnamurti would have said about AI?

Vish Alluri: (16:10 - 17:57)

In fact, he has said a lot about AI in the early 70s and 80s itself. We have brought out a booklet called The Future of Humanity in the Era of AI. I got a lot of things he said about AI and ultramechanical intelligence, artificial intelligence.

Intelligence, I'm told, is coming from the Latin expression called interlegere. Interlegere means reading in between. Artificial intelligence can't read in between the lines. If a line exists anywhere in the internet, it will tell you.

There is also a problem with artificial intelligence. See, while we should know the importance and the limitations of it, the problem is it can become a neurological problem according to Krishnamurti - I feel that way.

See, you're not accessing your brain. If you don't use your brain, it's going to decay and it can be a serious problem for the health problems of humanity. So, there may be a big business potential for neurologists, I think.

In fact, there is an article written by me recently called The Good, The Bad, Ugly and the Danger of AI. So, AI is good, but provided you use it only as a tool. AI can never replace human intelligence.

The only good thing about AI is it's called artificial. People don't know what is intelligence. They think artificial intelligence is the intelligence. That is the trouble. Having said that, there's something called - Krishnamurti used the word supreme intelligence. Supreme intelligence is, as you understand, from moment to moment, things are changing, are changing inside.

No artificial intelligence can replace that - that is something that only you can understand yourself. That is important. So, supreme intelligence is something which is not the artificial intelligence of a computer.

Nicola Hunt: (17:57 - 18:28)

So, as you say, with artificial intelligence, it cannot read between the lines. And my takeaway from our conversation is it's not just important for managers to read between the lines, but to understand themselves better and more deeply. Because if they do that, they will be able to better read between these lines.

Is that a fair, very simplified summary of what you're saying?

Vish Alluri: (18:28 - 18:41)

Yeah, that's a good summary. You see, you want to be a leader, you should have clarity in yourself. If you don't have clarity, then you become like a blind man leading a blind man. Leadership has no meaning for that, according to me.

Nicola Hunt: (18:42 - 18:49)

Vish, what a fascinating conversation. For people wanting to get hold of a copy of the book, how can they get it?

Vish Alluri: (18:49 - 18:56)

It's all available on Amazon in the UK and the USA also is available on Amazon. So, Amazon is the main source of book availability.

Nicola Hunt: (18:57 - 19:00)

Thank you so much for joining me here today.