Corporate rivalry at its most intense has strong resonance in the worldwide struggle for land and resources that kings of yore once waged. The vocabulary of board rooms are littered with jargon culled from a different era. That, too, is not surprising, as corporate battles began even before the old order of feudal lords had passed over.
In many cases, including Indian, the men who populated the board rooms were indistinguishable from the kings who they served. In the middle of the Nineteenth century, Mark Twain, in his book A Connecticut Yankee in King Aurthur?s Court, transposes the knights of the Round Table to a modern board room, each running his own company with glee. The knights happily exchange their armour with suits and precipitate a crisis with equal ease. You are reminded of the change reading John Man? s? where he fuses the life?and history of Ghengis Khan (pronounced ?Chingis?) with management principles.
The only problem with such a transposition is that while general principles are easy to paraphrase, the one-to-one match of Ghengis?s management style with current best practices is difficult. This is so despite, as the author says, a steady rise in the level of interest in the academia with the leadership style of the Mongol leader.
No doubt the mixture of aggressive leadership with bouts of generosity could arouse intense interest , but it is difficult to believe the same can be copied profitably today. This is despite the Khan being a leader with every word capitalised. The style was highly dependent on the personality of the king who ruled. In Ghengis? case, the changes in the tribal leadership he authored were a result of his personality and, therefore, died when he did. His grandson Kublai Khan could not run the gauntlet of acquisitions in Indonesia, Vietnam and Japan when he tried to do so. So what should have been the most spirited application of the Khan school of management, slips up at the very first application, less than half a century after he died. But for those who want tips in management literature and a lateral view of how to execute a vision, it?s a good read.
Extract
One of Genghi’s most unexpected traits was his intellectual curiosity. He was illiterate and, as far is known, uneducated. Yet he had a deep interest in religion, inspired by his own success, which he believed was achieved with the support of Haven. Why was this so? What response did it call for? He had no answers. But his openness unwittingly joined him to an ancient debate that ran across many cultures: should a ruler also be a philosopher? Or should he rely on advisers? Chinese scholars believed rulers should rely on advice. In the fifth and the fourth century BC, Plato argued that kings should be genuine and adequate philosophers’, whereas his pupil Aristotle argued that kings ‘should take advice from true philosophers’. In the ninth and tenth centuries AD, the Islamic philosophers al-Farabi argued that theology, law-giving, philosophy and kingship must all combine to underpin society. Genghis learned of such matters from his scholarly adviser Yelu Chucai, who determined to make Genghis into a Daoist sage. Genghis responded, or seemed to. Whatever his beliefs, Genghis apparently saw the advantages of being seen as a thoughtful ruler committed to austerity, selfless service and the welfare of his people.