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Yoga and Project Management
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By Rod Hutchings AdvDipPrjMgt BAppSc MAppSc MAIPM MACS(Snr) RegPM(CPPD)
The number one tenet of becoming a successful project manager is raising your own awareness of what you're doing and managing. To that end, Yoga helps project managers and team members be successful.
At an individual level, Yoga improving self-awareness/management,concentration, equipoise, tolerance, the ability to take calculatedrisks and plan long term.
Yoga philosophy of life, is not restricted to just asana andpranayama, it is a path of all-round development of an individual:physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Yoga helps improve onesinternal process of managing one's body, thoughts, intellect, emotionsand spirit. Moreover, improving your ability to overcome emotions likeanger, jealousy, greed, ego, and undue attachment.
Patanjali defined yoga as a technique of mind control. Vashishta said yoga is a skilful strategy to calm down the mind.
Both managers and yogis are expected to remain steadfast insituations both favourable and unfavourable. In the most-quoted verse48 of chapter two of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna advises: “Beingsteadfast in yoga, O Arjuna, perform actions, abandoning attachment,remaining unconcerned as regards success and failure. This evenness ofmind is known as yoga.
A manager is required to use authority. But unless authorityis combined with dispassion, the result can be contrary to expectation.
Today's project manager is required to have qualities of a goodleader — ability to construct a creative vision and capacity to havetrusting relationship with large number of people with whose help thisvision is to be fulfilled. A project manager with clarity of personalgoals and calmness of mind can only be an able manager. This is whereyoga helps.
Man is in the first part of the word manager, therebyindicating the need for man-management as the most crucial part ofmanagement. As Swami Anubha-vanandji puts it, management is anintuitive art of relating yourself with various stakeholders in acompany such as staff, customers and suppliers.
Yoga teaches us the art of treating every human being as aform of the divine. Use of higher consciousness in dealing with peopleis sure to result in better motivation and loyalty among stakeholders.
There are certain key differences between western managementconcepts and yoga-based management. The former starts with the premisethat a person remains inactive unless propelled by action throughmotivation — money, position or recognition.
Yoga-based management starts with the belief that everyindividual is divine by nature and the purpose of yoga is to bring outthis divinity.
Any individual, by nature, wants to do good work but unsuitable conditioning may prevent him from doing so.
Commitment in the true sense can only be inspired for a cause bigger and better than self.
Western management philosophy puts primary emphasis oncompetition, while in yoga way, the emphasis is on collaboration andindividual creativity. In the West there is greater emphasis on goalachievement for the firm, while in yogic management, success of thefirm is an inevitable by-product of the holistic goal of making thisworld a better place to live in with the spirit of yajna. In theformer, karma is an input which can be hired, while Indic philosophyfocuses on duty as one's dharma.
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Reply #1 on : Mon February 02, 2009, 03:48:05