As an employee it is our favourite pass time to be critical of our superiors and peers. I have seen very few people actually happy with their bosses. Normally we all know better than our superiors and when it comes to our peers we are obviously most deserving of the lot. As a student we are critical of majority of our teachers. As children, we often are angry with our parents. We somehow are perpetual cribbers, hell bent on proving others wrong and ourselves right.

Other day I met a friend who was very upset. His boss had been a difficult person. Not only he thought he was the only repository of wisdom, he wanted everybody to behave the way he thought was right and in the event anyone not doing so it was a public humiliation. My friend was worked up about these habits of his boss and was feeling frustrated that despite his best efforts there was no change in these habits. While he was narrating his frustration, I was smiling. He got even wilder with this. He asked me quite angrily why was I doing this. I calmly asked him what ‘he’ wanted. Did he want to ‘reform’ the boss so that he behaved the way my friend expected? Or his objective was doing his own job well, deliver the expected results, have a pleasant environment around him and grow in his career? The response was instantaneous. He confidently said that it was the second option which was true. Then I asked him if he was working for the first option or the second. Now this made him think. Slowly, in a meek voice he said he was working on the first option.

Do we see the contradiction here? While he was working on the option first he expected results in option second. How’s it possible? Option one was person centric whereas the option two was situation centric. Since it was person centric it slowly bred contempt in the mind of my friend about his boss, which sometime reflected in his conduct which in turn was read by his boss and which in turn again manifested in his conduct with my friend. Amazing and vicious cycle. And my poor friend all the time kept cribbing and criticizing his boss, without realizing that it is he who gave wrong treatment to a problem.

Unfortunately, my friend is not alone in this plight. We see this situation around us all the time. Very often we behave the way my friend behaved. Instead of managing situations and people our focus moves to reforming people as per our own definition and proving ourselves right. Instead of solving anything this creates more complications in terms of problem itself and then in interpersonal relations. The reality is no one accepts his mistake and if he is forced to do so it generates contempt in his mind for the other person.

After completing my engineering when I joined MBA it was a different world. From formulae, input and output scenario we stared discussing case studies and managing situations. While in engineering generally input and output were known and answers to the questions were definitive, when it came to managing situations in the case studies the scenario was different. We were told that there is no one right answer. There can be many solutions and our objective was to select the best objective. It was a great change in my thinking at least. On the lighter side, I was relieved too since I could never go wrong here. As managers we were supposedly trained to manage situations. After more than a silver jubilee of completing our MBA I have seen far more of the world. When we see the CEOs of companies not many companies in India have so called blue blooded MBAs heading them. There are many CAs, engineers and graduates who have reached these positions and are doing as well or better than the MBAs, even if we speak of non-promoter CEOs. While different people will have different explanations for this, in my humble opinion, managing situations, people and contradictions can’t be taught in management schools. It has to be learnt by us on our own. Destiny apart, if we manage things better, we get better results.

Let me narrate a situation from our personal lives. It was a weekend and Rohit was planning a relaxed time at home after a hectic and stressful week at work. He had informed his wife Neha also about the plans. But as the fate would have it, Saturday morning only the maid announced that she was also stressed out and wanted two days off. That triggered a full blown storm in the house. Neha lost her temper on the maid. She shouted at her on the phone. But maid was far away and in case had anticipated this firing. So she was cool and calm. This further infuriated Neha. Eventually, this started coming out on Rohit that he is a typical Indian husband who treated his wife like a servant and a door mat and never helped her in household chores. Rohit was looking forward to a relaxed weekend and here he was, getting shouted at. The situation was not only getting out of control, it was becoming like a turf war between the couple. Each one was trying to prove the other wrong. From the desire of a relaxed weekend it quietly transformed itself into a mini Mahabharat. Had Rohit and Neha stayed with managing the situation they would have come up with many workable solutions. First, they could have taken the maid in confidence in advance and promised her compensatory off or extra money so that the problem didn’t come suddenly. A sort of proactive preventive action. Or else they may have gone out for a movie and food, ordered something from outside, prepared some quick dish together etc. But the energy was focussed on individuals rather than the situation worsening it further and creating longer lasting impact on interpersonal relations.

In Indian context we often see Marwaris and Gujaratis doing significantly better than other communities when it comes to business. We have a lot to learn about ‘managing situation’ from them. To give you a real life example I must tell you about business in the north east where I’ve had the privilege of visiting and knowing people. Even at the height of terrorism and agitations, when some people were forced to leave also, business was getting adversely impacted, one community never felt threatened. It was the Marvaris there. These are the people who never went into right and wrong of issues and people but stayed focussed on their business. Irrespective of governments, agitationists and terrorists, they always managed the situation well and continued flourishing. They never created enemies anywhere, on either side of the fence. This is an amazing example of managing situations.

Similarly, life very often presents us with contradictory situations. There are no easy answers in such situations. Sometime sales managers have higher sales targets to achieve which they may have to give higher discounts. This is not acceptable to the management because it reduces the profits. What should the sales manager do in this situation? To increase volumes, you have to compromise on margins. To achieve one you have to sacrifice other. In this situation one of the salesmen doesn’t achieve his numbers due to lack of effort. If sales manager acts tough with him, either the salesman resigns or goes further into his shell and becomes more inefficient. If he doesn’t, then the salesman gets further emboldened and performs even worse in future. Once again a contradictory situation which has no easy solution. If you achieve one objective, you compromise on the other.

This is where we need to elevate ourselves to a higher level of thinking, of managing contradictions. Find out what is priority number one. Achieve that first and ensure that the other contradictory objective is managed in a way that it has least adverse impact. There has to be a very conscious movement away from people and personalities, for which I often say that only the faces change, people always remain the same around us, imperfect, political and behaving like Indian crabs pulling others down all the time.

Politicians as a group are probably one of the most reviled group in the world. More often than not they are seen in bad light. But I admire them. We have a lot to learn from them and the fundamental rules of political games. Have we ever heard before that ‘Politics is an art of possible’? Have we ever heard that ’In politics there are no permanent friends or enemies’? Aren’t these very positive statements? Have we seen in the recent past two parties having diametrically opposing ideologies joining hands together to form a government in the J&K? Can’t we as individuals pick up these good elements from political class and try to implement them in our lives? This gives us an amazing perspective of managing contradictions, staying focussed on the objectives and keeping clear of interpersonal frictions and biases.

Today I was reading in one of the newspapers that US doesn’t want the government of President Assad to fall down in Syria as it will give a room to another group of extreme ideology to fill the gap. Just few months ago, they wanted this government to go. This situation demands high degree of skill, balancing and managing contradictions. Here also, it is said that ‘in diplomacy there are no permanent friends or enemies, only the interests are permanent’. What it doesn’t say that it is equally applicable in personal lives. We have to ‘manage’ the situations, contradictions and people without creating permanent enemies at least. Friends though should be permanent in personal lives.

The reason I decided to write on this issue is that I see a huge strife around me due to our excessive focus on individuals, their not behaving in a way that we approve of, cribbing and bickering behind the backs and in the process making our own lives miserable.

My Little Thought of Life in this context is that life is all about ‘managing’ but not ‘controlling’ either the situations or the people. So long as we stay true to ‘managing’, not only we will achieve our life objectives better but also remain happy ourselves and create a healthy environment around us. We need to consciously work towards creating a detachment in us towards personalities and people associated with the situation and stay focussed on the situation and our objectives. For example, while managing a complex Industrial Relations and labour unrest situation, we must stay focussed on the situation without it leading to personal enmity between the management and the union leader. When I say this I’m conscious of the fact that sometime ‘managing’ may include asserting, putting the foot down, opposing and at times crossing swords also. After all, this is also a way of ‘managing’, though a good management of life would create these situations to a much lesser extent. If Mahabharat has to happen it will, but a better managing of situation, people and contradictions will ensure that such instances are much lesser.

Have a good life journey by managing rather than controlling or reforming others.