MANAGEMENT WITH A DIFFERENCE

With one month to go for the CAT every one is  busy.Reading like they never have.their sudden love for literature astonishes me.solving maths problems is a hobby now and no day is complete without solving a sudoku.All this is good for the nation.In fact great.We need intellect! in large quantities.But time and again two questions have troubled me.and i would like to address them here.1)Who exactly is a manager?and what is his role with respect to his organization and the society in generel.2)What makes a great manager and who is the greatest manager of all time?

So who is a manager?

Someone who is good at Math.Someone with a great reading ability.Someone who is in charge of the projects of his organization.someone who has good communication skills?and off course someone who has a lot of money!! all this and more you would say makes a great manager.But i would have to disagree.Maths,English and logic are three very narrow minded views of the three big qualities a manager needs to have.He has to be a strategist,a psychologist and more importantly a compassionate person.And no test in the world can judge all of these qualities together.a cousin of mine once told me that the reason that he prefers his current boss more than his previous one is because his current boss  has things other than just work on his mind.things like music,writing,cricket.so it is very important that the person who is in charge is just a normal person like the rest of his employees.someone who is passionate about his life.someone others can relate to.someone others want to learn from.and trust me no management institute teaches you that.

now who is the greatest manager of all time?

a lot of names crop up in my mind.but there is this one name that accentuates itself.MAHATMA GANDHI.why and how? i ask myself.and here's the reply.

Can you think of a more difficult organization to handle than a country like India? but then you would say all prime ministers do that.whats the difference? remember in 1940's India was in conundrum.and to gather the pieces of a country together and make something out of it is something commendable.so here we have this huge organization with its million's of employees(the people) most of them too hesitant to present their views.And here comes a man with a stick and a charkha and says we can do it.We can be independent.And the britishers laugh on his face.and what followed after that is history.Gandhi bocomes a national symbol.someone everyone can connect with.someone ordinary yet so extraordinary.someone who has his own ideologies and stands by them no matter what.Someone who's work is more than just work.The enthusiasm that Gandhi created in India about this new method of protest called 'SATYAGRAH'  is exemplary.In US during the vietnam war people carried posters of GANDHI which said "we need him!!".His impact was global.someone who was a calm strategist,very understanding and compassionate like no one has ever been.I wonder.. could he clear the CAT?:)