Jaipuria Indore Explores The Link Between Spirituality And Management With Famed Author Achal Rangaswamy

In its continuous mission to bring a wide spectrum of opinions and perspectives to its student managers, Jaipuria Institute of Management, Indore invited Achal Rangaswamy.

Indore (I-Newswire) October 17, 2012 - In its continuous mission to bring a wide spectrum of opinions and perspectives to its student managers, Jaipuria Institute of Management, Indore invited Achal Rangaswamy, the celebrated author of books like ‘Beyond the Uncharted Landscape’ and ‘Time is Money’, on the 1st of September 2012. Achal Rangaswamy, with his trademark wit, brought in a profound perspective to management in his address to the audience at Jaipuria Indore.

The Media Relations Club (MRC) of Jaipuria Indore caught up with the distinguished author after his lecture for a brief chat on his remarkable journey from ‘salesman’ to well-known writer.

MRC: Born in Chennai, brought up in Delhi, and starting off your career as a salesman in Rajasthan. How have you been so successful at breaching location barriers?

Achal Rangaswamy: When I passed out of St. Stephen’s college in New Delhi, it was with just one burning ambition – to ride a ‘Bullet’. I went about asking people, ‘Will you give me a Bullet to ride?’ There were various reactions to this question and not all are printable here, but I did end up bumping into this British guy, the sales head of a multinational company, who said ‘I will give you a ‘Bullet’, but you’ll have to work!’ I replied, ‘Sure, I can do anything to ride a bullet’. The deal thus struck, he gave me a Bullet to ride, plus a princely sum of Rs. 200 per month, and asked me to go into the interiors of Rajasthan to sell. I was really happy riding the Bullet. I met all kinds of people, visited many places and enjoyed my work as well. I did 200,000 kms on that Bullet without even noticing it. It was a huge achievement for me. The fact that 5 years down the line, I was recognised as the Best salesperson of the year by the same company came a distant second.

MRC: Fascinating! While many of us would like to go after things that we know work for us, there are few like you who actually do. Did you make notes of your ‘travels on the Bullet’? Surely there must’ve been experiences worth writing about?

Achal Rangaswamy: Numerous… good as well as bad experiences. I’ve captured quite a few of hem in my recent book, ‘Beyond the Uncharted Landscape’. It borrows heavily from my challenges and motivations while journeying through life on a Bullet. The book is based on my 33 years of work experience – 22 of them as the Head of Sales and Marketing. There were many youngsters who have worked with me in this period, and this book speaks about what my learnings from them were as well. Had I named my book conventionally, I would’ve actually called it ‘What Indian B-Schools Need to Teach’.

MRC: Can you give us some more insights on this book? Why would you have conventionally called it ‘What Indian B-Schools Need to Teach’?

Achal Rangaswamy: This book is co-published with the Sri Aurobindo Society, Pondicherry. Their reason to co-publish, as conveyed to me, is that, ‘You might have written this book from a management perspective, or to speak about how to become a good manager, but we feel it has a highly spiritual current’.

MRC: Unbelievable! Do you actually see this connect between management and spirituality?

Achal Rangaswamy: A book is pretty much a manifestation of the individual behind it. I don’t think I exude the aura of your standard Marketing Head or Sales Head. The reason behind this is that most of them seem stressed out. Their focus is either on their watch, laptop or mobile. But then, this demeanor contradicts the definition of leadership in the first place. Leadership is not about demonstrating how much you can do by yourself; it’s about motivating and overseeing others to get the job done. When I was working for ‘Bell Ceramics’, we took the company from 4 crores to 220 crores. A company is like a machine, and a leader is a component of it just like many others. At times you need to be the mechanical component of the machine, at others you might be the power component pulling the critical things along, and sometimes you are just a spare part which comes to work in times of urgency. It is not ‘where’ you are in the organisation, but ‘what’ you are to the organisation that matters; and once you realise this, you will give your best.

Spirituality and management go hand in hand; the more relaxed you are while doing your job, the better you perform. If you look at the top achievers in this world, their training schedules actually have pockets of meditation. When you are relaxed, your body and mind are in sync, you are able to absorb things very nicely, and you put in your best when you perform.

MRC: Thank you so much for your time, Sir. We look forward to seeing you soon atJaipuria Indore again.