Recently I had written about certain lessons I have learnt from Hindu Myth. Here are a couple more, which are perhaps more relevant in the corporate context.
Ganesha Subramanya
Ganesha and Subramanya had a race as to who could go round the world faster. Subramanya immediately jumps on his peacock, which is the fastest thing in the world, and instructs it to go round the world as fast as possible. He makes it in a reasonable amount of time.
Ganesha thinks different. “It’s a small world”, he reckons, “and my parents will be impressed if I tell them that they are my world”. So he just goes round his parents, and wins the race.
Most companies are like Subramanya. Got a tough deadline? They hire the best peacocks and flog them in order to do a quick job. Great companies are those that follow the Ganesha paradigm – they get a good reason, and take the easy way out!
Brahma
Each minute of Brahma is supposed to last several thousands of human years (I’m not too sure of the exact number). Similarly if someone says “this job should take only a few minutes”, you should quickly understnad that it is a “few minutes” according to Brahma Standard Time. Similarly, you have “I’ll get back to you in a minute” or “I’ll join you in a minute”. All according to Brahma Standard time.
Let me know if you can think of more such analogies…
The brahma standard time holds only as long as ‘they’ have to get back, they have to report back, they have to join u etc.On the contrary, if u are on the giving end, and they on the receiving end,they will get back earlier than expected or necessary(I’m not too sure if I can say that the mins they arrive early is also Brahma standard time)..