Ajit Balakrishnan: The Mintzberg Cure

PEOPLETECH

I had a nightmare early one morning last week. In my nightmare I was standing bare-chested at a New York street corner, near midnight in a wintry February. The temperature was subzero and the wind was howling down the avenues and I was shivering near death.

Then I woke up with a jolt and realised that I was in my bedroom in Mumbai. It was November, not February. I was wearing normal night clothes and I had a cover over me "" I was not bare-chested. But I was shivering with cold all the same. I tried to lift myself up on my elbows to see outside the window if there were icicles on our Mumbai windows. My elbows were unable to lift me up and immediately fell back. But there were no icicles on the windows. It was a normal clear November morning in Mumbai. My throat felt very sore. I tried remembering how I had felt when I went to sleep the previous night. I had struggled with a few dozen pages of Strategic Safari: A Guided Tour Through the Wilds of Strategic Management by Henry Mintzberg and others. I was getting drawn in to it as I drifted off to sleep.

I waited for the sun to rise so that it would be a civilised enough hour to wake up my physician.

"I think I am afflicted with some serious illness," I whispered hoarsely to him.

"Describe to me how you feel," he said.

I described in my hoarse whisper my sore throat, my aching bones, the exhausted feeling, the feeling that I was standing unclothed at a New York street corner in the middle of winter ...

"Do you have a dry cough?" he asked.

"Yes, I do!"

"You have flu," he announced.

"Only a flu? Then why do I feel that I am about to die of exhaustion?"

"That's normal with this type of flu," he said.

"Can't you give me an injection or something that will cure this thing immediately?" I said, reeling off all the important meetings that I had to fly off to.

"I can't give you any injections or pills for this; you need to rest at home for a week. By the way, please cover your mouth so that when you cough you don't pass on your flu to anyone else. And please don't go to work "" you will end up spreading your flu to the rest of your office."

I sank back into bed and glanced at the stack of books by my bed side. The Mintzberg book was waiting. By way of introducing the book, Mintzberg quotes the 19th century fable about the six wise but blind men of "Indostan" who set out to understand what an elephant is all about.

Just then, a neighbour drifted in with a sympathetic look on her face.

"I hear you are felled by flu," she said. "What are you taking for it?"

"The doctor says, take no medicines, just rest in bed," I replied.

"Take my advice," she said. "Take some strong antibiotics; I do that whenever I or my children get flu."

"How can antibiotics possible help?" I asked. Even I know that antibiotics work only against illnesses caused by bacteria whereas flu is caused by virus.

"I don't know about all these theories," she said. "Antibiotics work for me when I have flu. Anyway, bye and get well soon."

I got back to where I had left off with Mintzberg preface. So, one wise but blind man of Indostan felt the side of the elephant and declared that the elephant was a wall, the other felt its tusk and declared it to be spear-like, the third thought it was a snake, the fourth a tree, the fifth a fan and the sixth a rope ...

Another neighbour drifted in.

"How's the flu? Feeling any better?" she asked.

"It's been only a few hours," I said. "The doctor says I need to rest for a week at least and the flu will run its course and go away."

"Have you taken any Crocin?" she asked. "Stuff yourself with Crocin and the flu will go away quickly."

"Isn't Crocin a paracetamol? Won't it merely lower the body temperature? Will that not interfere with the body's own response to the virus?" I asked her.

"Well, it works for me whenever I get flu. Anyway, bye. Get well soon." And she traipsed off.

Suddenly, Mintzberg's point came in a flash to me. Many management theory prescriptions tend to be like my neighbours' attempt to be helpful, without fully understanding what cause and what effect had worked for them when they tried an antibiotic or a paracetamol.

I spent the past week following Mintzberg's recounting of how ten different management theories have held sway at different points of time but how each was like the blind men of Indostan "" guessing about the whole by touching a part of business reality.

Now that I am rid of my flu I could add another prescription for curing flu to that of my neighbours: curl up in bed and read a management treatise! I could say it worked for me.

Comments welcome ajitb@rediffmail.com