“Ati Nyaya” – enemy of Recognition

One of the top reasons for employee attrition is lack of rewards and recognition. As a leader or a manager, it might seems to us that recognition is a simple task.

But a recognition in itself is meaningless unless it is timely and is given to deserving.

A Recognition which is not on time or which goes to undeserving will cause more side effects than the actual good effects.

 As a manager we seldom look at rewards as an un-important task. Some might choose recognition as a way to reduce our headaches by using an approach “Crying baby gets the food” and then reward his/her team members accordingly.

It is human trait to avoid the head aches.Hence we try to avoid those team members who would crib, cry, fight with you every day. We decide why not recognize them and cool them down for some time. The recognition which might have been early or even if it was too much for the work that was done.

Wrong move!!!! This is the concept called “ati nyaya”.

“Ati nyaya” is a concept where a person is given more than what is deserved and justice is not done on facts or dharma but is based on the reason that this will reduce headache to the one who delivers judgement, will have less after effects, will have everyone happy post the judgement is given.

This happened during the Mahabharat story as well. Duryodhana was that crying baby who cribbed, cried, blackmailed his father , Bhishma and he ended up getting his fruit much before his time.

Vidura explains this concept to Bhishma during the discussion of “Who should be the crown prince whether Yudhishtira since he is alive or Duryodhana who was coronated assuming yudhishtira was dead”.

It was clear and justful that while there is Yuvaraja(crown prince) alive, the coronation of another(Duryodhana) was null and void. Yet it was decided that it is better to divide the kingdom than make Duryodhana unhappy as this might lead to more chaos in the kingdom.

The pandavas were dharmic, they took the decision in a good way inspite of knowing that the justice was not done to them by giving a barren land yet they converted this adversity into opportunity and created the kingdom from scratch. They did not rebel but accepted the decision without rebellion.

But today we do not have pandavas around us, when such ati nyaya happens people rebel or silently leave !!!

Reward the deservving or do not at all. When u recognise a wrong person, the deserving feel left out. You might have cooled down a wrong rebel but you are actually nurturing the bad habits in others. In no time you will have more people following this approach.

Nurture those attitudes that you respect and you might lose in short term but it will build beautiful teams in the long run.

Just to satisfy one’s whims do not lose the team.