Making a Case for Holistic Leadership
One of India’s top management gurus has written a highly relevant but unusual book. It is unusual both in its theme and its narrative. Arun Maira, a veteran of the corporate world, addresses the need for holistic and ethical leadership at a time when leadership is measured in terms of value creation in dollars and cents. The question of wise stewardship has never been more urgent than today. Although the book was not written with these kinds of lifethreatening global issues in mind, serendipitously it has raised issues that address the urgency of today.
Maira begins with a quotation from American poet Robert Frost that seems eerily apt for today’s pandemic ravaged world:
Forgive O Lord my little jokes on Thee,
And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.
The point the author raises in this volume, narrated through the lives of a few remarkable individuals (presented anonymously), is the urgent need for systems thinking. Leadership may allow one to play a little “joke,” to innovate policies to bring about changes, but one forgets how that may rebound on the broader world. People put in charge of organizations need to think of themselves as part of a larger system and behave accordingly even while pursuing their own dreams. Leaders need to remind themselves that their attempts to solve problems or increase productivity have systemic consequences.
In Maira’s words, it is like redesigning an airplane while flying. His slim volume is thought-provoking and raises some important issues.