Want to Increase Your Performance? Forget Yourself: Q&A with the author of “India Unbound”
By Jayant Vohra
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On March 8, Gurcharan Das, former CEO of Proctor & Gamble India and the author of the best-selling book, “India Unbound” (which the BBC has just made into a documentary), spoke to the University community. A few days later McCombs MBA ’04 Jayant Vohra, former president of the Indian Graduate Business Association, had a chance to record an interview with the famous executive turned consultant, novelist and playwright.
Jayant Vohra: Mr. Das, you recently spoke at the University’s Institute of South Asian Studies about the concept of Nishkam Karma. Could you illustrate this concept?
Gurcharan Das: Most of the time, there is a movie playing inside me...ten thousand thoughts come into my consciousness. Not surprisingly, nine thousand of these are about me. So the "I" looms very large. And so I crowd out other things—my work, my family, my friends, my God, whatever else I am preoccupied with. The project of Nishkam Karma in the Bhagvad Gita is a learning self-forgetting. By becoming self-forgetting, out of ten thousand thoughts, only one thousand ought to be about you, and other nine thousand should be about other things. You can become a better person, or invest in your work and hence become a better performer—great artists and performers are doing this all the time. They lose track of time.... You can be the same. Let those nine thousand thoughts not be about yourself, and you will be a very superior player. Michael Jordan behaves like this—when he is about to shoot a basket, he isn't thinking whether his contract will go well or not. If he starts thinking about this at that moment—wham, it's over. The magic is gone. So this is my project now: to get better behavior in the world; and to get better performance. Every CEO would love it. And all employees would love it, because if CEOs behaved this way, maybe we will have less Enrons!
JV: How do you plan to get this message across to people? Do you plan to write another book?
GD: Yes. I am going to interrogate classical texts; for instance Buddhist texts, which talk about the idea of achieving a state of self-forgetting. There are a lot of insights in Zen Buddhism, in Yoga, in Aristotle’s works. The Stoics also had insights into how to be a better person. My idea is that if your thoughts about yourself go from nine thousand to one thousand, then automatically... consciousness is like nature—it abhors a vacuum, and hence other thoughts come in. And this is also about focus, you focus on something, and the distractions go away automatically. Yoga texts are very important, and there are huge insights in Patanjali's yoga sutras about this idea. In fact, I've spent a delightful time at this University, and just came from Steven Philip's lecture on Patanjali's yoga sutras. So, it's a process of interrogating texts— not just Eastern, but also Western texts—read Jane Austen, Proust—writers who are concerned about an excess of self-importance. People who exhibit excessive self-regard—they are not nice people to be around. So we are trying to create a nicer environment in our companies.
JV: So what about the phenomenon of star CEOs?
GD: The star performers—e.g. Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, are what I call real secular ascetics. They are into production, not into consumption. And they are not driven by the money. This is the irony. You are giving stock options to the wrong people, they would have performed regardless. They have to get it out of themselves. You think Bill Gates spends his time thinking about his millions? Never, he's performing regardless.
JV: So what is he performing? What is he striving toward?
GD: Achievement! He is the kind of guy who is in the zone. Its excellence, what Aristotle called excellence of activity…. Capitalism talks about self-interest, not selfishness. That's a very important distinction. What Adam Smith talks about is rational prudence.When I go to the market to buy the best mangoes at the lowest price, that's not being selfish. Or I take an umbrella when it's raining—that's not being selfish, that's being rational, being self-interested. When the ego becomes small, we become liberated. You are capable of fantastic power, because you are not bothered by little things. And you become innovative. And the great creations of man were done by such people.
JV: Given what you said about Adam Smith’s rational prudence and your advocacy for free markets, what are your views on the current outsourcing debate raging in America?
GD: These protectionists need to be rapped on their knuckles. Friedman has been doing this every few days from Bangalore in The New York Times. America, whose success was built on free markets and free trade, is now turning protectionist. I don’t believe this thinking will prevail. In America, economics prevails over politics in the end. And that's why just as the CEOs of Detroit could not stop Japanese cars, they won't stop this. The economic logic is too strong—it's a losing battle. This country was built with an abundance mentality. And that's how it has been successful. So these steel quotas that were there—thank God they've got rid of them. That's why I think the best friend of the world is the WTO—the best friend for prosperity, of free trade. These last 10 years have been very good years. WTO deserves a lot more credit than people give it.
JV: Given the brouhaha about outsourcing, what is it you feel that the world needs to know more about India?
GD: The best thing about this offshoring controversy is that suddenly the world has woken up to the excellent human capital in India. And ironically, what this controversy has done is to make mid-cap, small enterprises, which perhaps don't even know where India is, suddenly wake up and say: Oh my God, I'm not doing this—maybe I'm doing something wrong. Imagine the money—the millions of dollars in advertising that the Government of India would have had to spend to get that awareness. That's the marketing man in me saying there's value in this controversy.
JV: Are you saying that negative publicity is better than no publicity?
GD: Absolutely. But I'm not so sure it's negative, because earlier Americans had a sort of patronizing attitude towards India—poverty, snakes, snake-charmers, spirituality…. Now, they see Indians as competitors. When somebody is your competitor, your respect for that person goes up. The way respect went up for Japan in the 80s. That respect has gone up for China, and is now going up for India. I think this will do a world of good.
I didn't respect Unilever till I had to compete against it in the market—then I realized how good they were. Or Nestle—I competed against them in Spain, and I realized, my God how good a company they are—they're fighters. So your respect goes up for somebody who is a real fighter, who is taking you to the cleaners. Competition is good—it makes you sharper.
JV: Do you think competition is always good?
GD: Where competition is bad is the excessive internal competition within a company, where people regard the guy in the cubicle next door as the enemy, instead of the guy in the competing company—too much negative competition. That's a problem for companies, and that's where Nishkam karma comes in. If you can get people to diminish the ego a little bit, you'll get a better environment.
JV: Is that what you are looking for in life?
GD: In my life I want to do three things: One, write. Two, in some ways give my two cents to my political responsibility as a citizen. I am going to help form and strengthen the liberal movement in India— help form a right, secular party—a party that believes in markets and is secular. And third I want to be involved in philanthropy: I want to give half my assets to philanthropy in the area of teaching—improving teachers in primary schools, and creating a world-class institution for primary school teachers who are just the most de-motivated human beings on the face of the earth.
Why I like the idea of Nishkam karma is that you don't have to renounce the world and go somewhere into the Himalayas. You can live in the world, but you live in the world with the right attitude, where you are not concerned about me, me, me, all the time. You are self-interested, but not selfish – that’s the distinction…. Then you are I think, in every way, a better human being.
JV: Can I call you an idealist then?
GD: No, I think I’m a realist. India Unbound for instance is totally data-based. And all of these are in the realm of the possible. You could call me positive, that's what I am—a positive person, not an idealist.
JV: Mr. Das, thank you for your time and all the best for your future endeavors.
GD: Thank you.
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