MANAGEMENT LESSONS FROM RAMAYANA – PART 1

INTRODUCTION:

RAMAYANA, is one of the greatest Indian scripture which has taught many lessons to the human community. Generally, the Hindu Scripture has majorly classified into two parts such as Shruti and Smriti. Under the Smriti, it is further classified into two parts – Hindu Epics and Puranas. Under the Hindu Epics, the Ramayana was classified.

The story tells us that the reason for the birth of Lord Vishnu (which was also called as Lord Rama) in the earth, reason for the forest life and how he rescued Sita Devi from Ravan from Sri Lanka.

Here, I am going to explain about some of the management lessons from Ramayana.

1. ASSIGNING OF TASK TO SUB-ORDINATES

When Rama and sita devi went for 14 years of forest life, one day Sita Devi was kidnapped by the Ravan and he took her to his place of Lanka (Present Sri Lanka). During her search, they found that Sita was in Lanka. Immediately, Jamvant guided Hanuman for his travel to Lanka to rescue her from Ravan.

Her the lesson that the leader must know the potential of his / her sub-ordinates, based on that only they need to assign the tasks to the team members.

2. SUFFICIENT KNOWLEDGE FOR PLANNING

Initially, Lord Hanuman was send to Lanka to collect the details about Ravan, who is the king in Lanka. He performed his assigned task well and returned back to the Rameswaram. During that Lord Rama and his team were ready to start their journey to Lanka through the path laid by his team members. Once the team reached Lanka, they started analysing about the strength and weakness of Ravan through the knowledge collected by the Hanuman.

Like this, in order to do a certain task or to plan certain strategies we need to analyze about the competitors (SWOT Analysis) before starting our action plan accordingly.

3. VALUE OF THE BRAND:

When Hanuman and his fellow members were laying stone bridge from Rameeswaram to Lanka, the stones were sunked into the sea. After that, they wrote Rama in the stone and laid the bridge. Then the stone was floating in the sea. Like that, every brand should ensure that their brand name was printed in their products. Because, today the products were manufactured based on the customer needs and expectations. Hence they should ensure that their brand must add value to their customer.

4. MANAGERS SHOULD TRUST SUB-ORDINATES:

When Hanuman took the decision of setting up fire in some parts of Lanka, Lord Rama opposed that not to do such thing. But when Rama and his younger brother Laxmana went to that place, they suddenly got up the same situation. Hanuman was the person who rescued them back to their place. Then only Rama understood that he has a created a new leader within his team who has already figured out the exact plan to escape from that situation.

Like that the managers / supervisors must create or provide opportunities to their fellow colleagues or sub-ordinates to grow up in their career. They should also trust when handing over the tasks. This will definitely bring out the hidden talents from their team (or) sub-ordinates.

5. WAIT FOR THE RIGHT TIME

The ruler of Ayodhya Kingdom and father of Lord Rama was King Dasaratha. King Dasaratha has waited for many years in order to make his first son Rama as the prince for Ayodhya kingdom. The same interest was also shown by the Ayodhya people. After a very long time, King Dasaratha announced that decision. On the other side, Rama also ruled well the kingdom and safeguarded the people of Ayodhya.

Like that every business should have succession planning which should have been framed well before that situation. When the situation comes, the top management should in a state to implement those plans into actions. If they failed to do that before, definitely the business will go in a negative way. We can’t able to predict and make necessary succession plan for all the situations. However some situations can be predicted and they must be followed with the above mentioned points.

Thanks a ton for reading my article.