14. The mature self transacting in the world will give things easily and will not be risk averse.

 Being here to give is not necessarily about being nice. Being here to give is about being appropriate and appropriate is often not nice. We can use two examples to illustrate this. If a hungry child asks John for food, the appropriate thing for John to do is to give the child food. We call this quality generosity, because it’s about the giving of things. On the other hand if a strapping young lad called Dave is walking through a park and comes across a little old lady being beaten up by a thug, the appropriate thing for him to do would be to beat up the thug. We refer to the quality that Dave has to have to be able to do this as courage.

 If we look at these two examples behaviourally, we are confronted by an apparent contradiction. The result of John’s giving was a full stomach. The result of Dave’s giving was a thick ear. John’s giving involved sweetness and indulgence. Dave’s giving involved confrontation and violence. Clearly, giving is not always about being nice, it is about being appropriate.

Every moment that confronts us has a sense of what is appropriate, what the moment requires from us. Giving means we act consistently with this sense of what is appropriate. This sense of what is appropriate is presented to us in two broad classes. There is the giving of things associated with the self, which we call generosity. Then there is the giving of the self itself, which we call courage. Courage generally asks a higher price than generosity, because generosity puts things at risk, whereas courage puts the self at risk.

If giving is about being appropriate, it’s about paying the price of what the situation dictates, then taking has to mean getting the logic wrong, or acting in a situation that requires generosity in a so-called courageous way and vice-versa. For example, should John give the hungry child a thick ear for having the cheek to ask for food, we would not consider this an attribute of John’s courage, we would see it as selfishness. On the other hand, should Dave take the bag from the old lady and give it to the thug we would not see this as an attribute of his generosity, but rather an act of cowardice.

If you are in a situation that requires generosity and you act in a so-called courageous way you are not giving, you are taking. We call that selfishness. If you are in a situation that requires courage and you act in a so-called generous way you are not giving, you are taking. We call that cowardice.

The register of the internal dialogue of a person who is fundamentally here to take is to maximise gain and minimise loss. Their relationship with things will emphasise accumulation rather than giving, a quality which we experience as greed or selfishness. This necessarily means that their experience of the possibility of loss (which we have concluded to be inevitable) is a cause for anxiety or fear. The register of their internal dialogue is greed and fear.

I may ask what sits behind this? Why is it that I want to get more things? Why is it, that greed is an issue in my life? Why should I need to accumulate? This has to be predicated on a view that I haven’t yet received enough. The internal dialogue of a selfish person has a register of resentment which typifies how they are thinking of themselves in the situation they are in.

A person who is here to contribute is not trying to get more from life. When they look at the moment they have no accusation. They do not say, “I haven’t had enough yet. I need to get more.” They are saying that there is more than enough, “I have more than enough so therefore I can give freely.” So what enables the translation from an internal register of greed to an internal register of generosity is a shift from resentment to gratitude. A grateful person has something to give. A resentful person wants to get something.

If we examine the relationship between courage and cowardice it becomes apparent that a person who is cowardly cannot take the risk to do what is right and appropriate in the situation that they are in. It means they apprehend the future with a sense of distrust. They are saying the world is a dangerous place and if they don’t look after themselves they will be vulnerable and at risk. They will be taken out. They can’t afford to put themselves on the line or take a risk. The attitude that sits behind an internal dialogue of fear is distrust.

A courageous person can trust life because they are convinced that life has a design which is bigger than their own ingenuity. They know they don’t have to cover their own back all the time. They have concluded that, since they are still alive, the totality of the other is necessarily looking after them.

When they contrast the vastness of the universe that confronts them with their own puny nature, the number of things that could, at any point in time, go wrong with disastrous consequences for them personally, they conclude that statistically the odds of annihilation beat the odds of continuity moment by moment. So why are they still there? This can only mean because the totality of the other is not arbitrary, it admits of a sense of design. Further to that, this sense of design is deliberately benevolently disposed to the self. This person can trust because they inhabit a friendly rather than a hostile universe.

The person who is here to take looks back at the past with resentment and their look forward at the future is distrust. Of the two attributes of ingratitude and distrust, ingratitude has a primary and distrust has a secondary nature. If I examine my past and conclude that life has done me more ill than good I will not trust life as it unfolds into the future. On the other hand, the degree to which I conclude that life has done me more good than ill is the degree to which I will trust life as it unfolds.

This suggests that the key flaw that disables our pursuit of the fulfilment which we aspire to is resentment, and the key virtue that enables it is gratitude. Transmuting the register of our internal dialogue from resentment to gratitude therefore lies at the heart of the endeavour to cultivate contentment.

This deliberate cultivation of gratitude also lays the foundation for the capacity to trust, which is what enables one to take risk. If we want to find the genesis of risk aversion we must look for resentment. If we want to cultivate the courage that enables the appetite for risk then we should cultivate gratitude.           

The predominant worldview is based on self interest. It is predicated on an individual who looks at life from a vantage point of resentment. This resentment is not only deeply dysfunctional to the self; it produces a dysfunctional engagement between the self and the other. As we observed previously, if I think you owe me, my natural inclination is to go and get from you what I think you owe me. Because that is my fundamental intent with regard to you, you will experience me as dangerous to you. Also your ability to withhold what I want makes you dangerous to me. We are dangerous to each other and in a state of conflict.

In other words, far from being a virtue, resentment and discontentment are deeply injurious to the other surrounding the person who has it, as well as to the person who has it. The nature of all conditional motive is that it produces discontentment in the person who has it. If I’m doing something to get something else, it means the doing of what I’m doing is the price I have to pay in order to get what I want. If I need to pay a price that means the thing that I’m doing in the present is loss that I have to endure to get something in the future. But since it is only the present that exists, that means that the experience of my life is loss. The degree to which I do something for conditional motive is the degree to which my life experience is onerous and the cause of discontentment.

What made me go to this shop again and again to buy birthday gifts was that the owner used to ask me my budget and even if it was a paltry sum, he’d get out something beautiful to show to me. I still remember my first purchase; a palm-sized Plaster of Paris clown worth 50 rupees that was carefully put in a box and packed beautifully by the owner himself. The shop almost never failed me. The attitude of the shop owners made the whole process of picking out a gift an enchanting experience…so much so that in my teens I even daydreamed of having a gift shop of my own!

I’ve been to numerous other gift shops since then but very few have matched the service that Oasis provided. Sometimes when I see shopkeepers sitting idle in their shops with no customers, or sales professionals making a sales pitch at unfriendly, uninterested and unrelenting potential customers, I wonder how tough it must be to approach customers for a deal. Especially more so, if the sales professional has been asked by the management to achieve monthly targets no matter what.

It’s certainly not easy to be in a sales career where you have to focus on what you’re ‘getting’ from a person. The Schuitema framework explains that focusing on the ‘take’ side of a transaction consistently will make you resentful, get you in a conflict situation and make you feel like a victim with a sense of entitlement which in turn can drive you to deal with situations in a conniving manner.  

However, the Schuitema framework applies beautifully to a Sales career as well.

Schuitema stresses that one must work with a sense of purpose and if that sense of purpose is about making a positive contribution in the life of a customer, about serving the customer in the best possible way so as to truly benefit them, then the salesperson could be a highly motivated individual; one who is focused on the contribution he’s making for others and thereby feels fulfilled, is in harmony with those around him and who thinks about his duties rather than rights.

Supply actually exists to serve demand and not the other way round. So if a salesperson approaches a potential customer with the intent to serve and not to secure for himself, the sales pitch becomes a fulfilling act for both the sales professional and the customer.

For such a sales professional, a customer is not a number; a target that must be achieved. The customer is rather an individual who can be benefitted with a genuine need served.

Consider why you prefer a certain grocer, hairdresser, doctor or a bank over others. If you ponder over it, you’ll realise that the people you prefer over others are those who serve you better because they seem to know better than others what you want. These people grant you significance, are better listeners and do not categorise you as per their past experience of serving others.

I have found that the best doctors are not necessarily the ones whose appointments are the most difficult to obtain, or the ones who charge a heavy fee for a consult. In fact, the ones whose clinics are brimming with a crowd of patients may very well be the ones who are more concerned about the amount of money they make rather than the service they have to extend.

The best ones in fact are those who lend you an unhurried ear, who wish to treat you with what’s in your best interest and who consider your well being over and above their own interest.   

Same goes for schools. The ones with air conditioned swimming pools and sprawling custom built campuses might do little to equip the students with the skills necessary to excel in life.    

Over and over, you’ll see the service and attention principle apply to everyone in a simple ‘give and take’ transaction.  

So how does this principle apply to you in your daily life?

This conviction will introduce us to a new and deeply enchanting relationship with the universe that we are in. We will discover that the universe is not hostile to us, it is on our side. The interests of the self and the interest of the totality of the other are continuous. We are not separate from the other; we are deeply connected with it. There is a oneness that connects all things and every time that we act in the best interest of the other we transcend, for that moment, the illusion and alienation that we exist separately from it.

So the current worldview is fundamentally destructive because it creates actions that are based on greed and fear that are rooted in resentment and distrust. There is a far more wholesome way of looking at life, one which bases the intent of the individual on gratitude and therefore solicits the will to serve.

15.   The demeanour of the immature self is fundamentally hostile and malevolent with regard to the totality of the other. The other is seen to be there to serve the self. The other is seen to be that which has to be changed, dismembered and demeaned to satisfy the requirements of the self. It is therefore accurate to identify the intention of the immature self as malevolent intention.

There is a paradox that is operative here: When you consider yourself to exist as an individual you are faced with the problem that the self is fundamentally very small and the other is very big. The result of this is that the principle strategy of being alive is to try and outwit the other and to dominate the other. When that which is small is faced by that which is very big, the strategy of that which is small is to control or dominate the big. When we are vulnerable we seek to protect ourselves by controlling that which makes us vulnerable. The problem with this is that it is an unworkable prospect. It is the nature of that which is big to supersede and overcome that which is small.

This implies that the root of our assumption that we exist as an individual, is a fundamental terror and that terror gets translated into brutality and that brutality becomes thoughtlessness. It really doesn’t matter what I do to the world in order to maintain myself because the world is very big, I can consume it, I can damage it, I can break or manipulate it to satisfy my own requirements.

The key implication of the assumption that we exist as individuals is a sense of victimhood, a sense of “I’m a small thing dominated by a big universe and I’ve got to get my own out of it.” The demeanour of the self, when the self considers that the self exists as an individual, is fundamentally hostile to the world. This hostility sets the world up as fair game. Whatever I do to the other is fundamentally acceptable. My demeanour becomes malevolent.

To think that you exist as an individual means that you think that the world is a big place and you therefore have to make sure that your interests are protected. Therefore you can become malevolent and so the effect on the world around you will be destructive.

Self interest seems to be the predominant intent of the average adult citizen of the global village, which has somewhere between 6 and 7 billion inhabitants. The collective effect of this on the world has to be monstrously malevolent, which is why the world that we are in is in a process of extinction. To see the matter other than this is not seeing the thing as it is. In order to secure the self we destroy the world.

Art: ‘Coiled’ by Uckhet via www.flickr.com 

Peter Diamandis is considered a key figure in the development of the personal spaceflight industry, having created many space-related businesses or organizations. He is the Founder and Chairman of the X PRIZE Foundation, an educational non-profit prize institute whose mission is to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity.

Hear him talk on why we have more reasons to look forward to our future. Click onto: Abundance Is Our Future

16.  

 On the one hand, when I serve I become part of a Oneness which connects me to all things. The prospect of extinction of the self is then neither frightening nor threatening because the continuity that I am part of, continues. On the other hand, when I consider myself to exist as an individual, then the prospect of the loss of my individual life is horrifying. It creates the conditions where I live under a cloud of the immanence of extinction all the time. That terror, the terror of immanent  extinction, is the root of the malevolence of my actions.

 This extinction is not just about physical death. We have to understand that the individual self faces a prospect which is deeper, more profound than death. It is extinction. There is still a sense of benignancy in the idea of death, a sense of release. In the idea of extinction there is just the sense of empty horror. People who exist as individuals don’t die. They become extinct. They are extinguished. That which they spend their whole life fighting to stave off, the inevitable pressure coming from the totality of the other, eventually overwhelms them. They cease to exist, they are extinguished. They are as if they never were.

 17.   Every attempt of the malevolent self to establish order in view of securing the self will further entrench the process of decay and extinction of the world which the self experiences. This extinction of the world is exponential.

The point of this Postulate is the more control you try to impose the less control you have. Every strategy that the self engages to preserve itself is based on the assumption that the self can continue over time. It presupposes continuity. It presupposes that there is a tomorrow or this afternoon or next year etc. All strategies that are concerned with maintaining the self are control strategies. They are strategies that have as their fundamental intent the perpetuation of the self by producing predictable outcomes.

The universe and the other are profoundly ill-disposed to the attempt of the self to try and produce an outcome. How do we know this? - We have been given a social world which acts as the theatre or schoolyard where we can learn the rules that are operative between ourselves and the Totality of the Other.

Consider, for example, what happens between the self and other people. If you are dealing with somebody who is obviously trying to control you, your natural and intuitive reaction with regard to that person is to resist what they are trying to do to you. People hate being manipulated and having things taken from them.

When the self engages the other from the point of view of trying to secure an outcome through the other, the self creates a hostile other. The more we try to establish control, the more the thing we are trying to control becomes hostile towards us and will resist what we are trying to do.

The nature of the social other is that they are numerous and we are one. It is the nature of the many to outflank the one. The nature of the Totality of the Other is that it is infinite and we are puny. It is the nature of that which is vast to annihilate that which is puny. By putting ourselves opposite to the other we are picking a fight which could not be more unevenly matched. We are going to lose.

This loss is a loss of control over the outcome, which makes us even more insecure and more needing to control. The more we try to control them the more profoundly they resist our control, which means we have even less control. There is a horrendous vicious circle in this control problem. The more control you impose the less control you have.

The world is set up in such a way that everything that we do which is concerned with trying to secure our own future will come back to bite us in the fullness of time. The Totality of the Other clearly has a sense of humour. From every point of view the self is the powerless one, the beholden one: the one handed over to that which is greater. You cannot escape the Totality of the Other. Wherever you turn you are faced by the Totality of the Other. There is no hiding place and no escape. You are beholden to That. That is in charge.

18.  

When I change the other in order to preserve myself, my own existence, I destroy the other and paradoxically I am destroyed because the other becomes hostile to me. The death of Stalin is a useful example of this. Stalin was in the habit of inviting key associates to dinner, an affair that included much drinking and continued to the wee hours of the morning. If you were one of these key people you knew you had fallen out of favour when you were not invited. You could expect to be shot or transported to a Gulag within days.

One evening Stalin did not invite any of his key associates. They all assumed that they were about to be liquidated. When nothing happened a day later they got someone to go into Stalin’s room only to discover that he had a stroke of some kind and was lying unconscious in a puddle of his own urine. They did nothing at all and let the man die.

Stalin’s death indicates that it does not matter how much control the self seeks to exert over the other.  Life will eventually produce a set of circumstances that will make the self absolutely beholden to the other. This eventuality manifests what is the fundamental truth in any case. At this point the implications of having made the other deeply hostile to the self are catastrophic for the self.

The only other alternative I have to being opposed to the other is to set myself up as allied to the other. How do I escape the nightmare of being opposed to the other and demonstrate to myself that I exist as part of a continuity of which I am just a small part? That the other and me are on the same side?

I don’t act on the basis of my own self interest. I act on the basis of the interests of the other. Every time I act on the basis of the interests of the other I transcend myself, because I’m now saying to myself that I don’t have to look after myself. There is a super-ordinate continuity, there is a bigness of which I am part and when I act on the basis of the other I am allied to that bigness.

Art: Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians

The metaphor for this is an organic one. Your liver produces stuff which is good for everything else in your body, not just your liver. Your liver doesn’t exist for the liver. Your liver exists for the rest of the body, your heart and every other organ; it does not exist for itself. If it were conscious it would not act in its own interest. It would produce that which every other organ in the body requires and when it did that there would be an overall state of wellbeing that the liver would also benefit from.

Should the liver consider itself to be cut-off from the rest of the body, it would die. When the liver seeks to exist as an individual it dies. It cannot exist independently. When you give, you become part of a super-ordinate continuity that subsumes you. When you act for the other then you are confirming a wholesomeness which obviously sustains you too.

You tell your inner core; the root of your being, that you don’t exist as an individual by acting consistently with the best interest of the other in the situation that you are in and do that consistently. Every time you do that you are giving a deeper message to yourself: “I know I do not exist as an individual. I exist as part of a continuity that subsumes me therefore I don’t have to look after myself. The other looks after me. My role is to look after the other. My role is not to get anything, it is to give something.”

Clearly the effect of this on the world is benign. When you consistently act on the basis of the best interest of the other you will find a spontaneous order manifesting. This is so because the other is not hostile towards you. It is on your side. So in other words what exists between you and other isn’t conflict and hostility. It is harmony and orderliness.

That orderliness will be reflected in your physical environment. There will be a sense of order which will exude from you. One effect of this of this is that you don’t require to be served. You don’t leave disorder in your wake that somebody else has to pick up.

19.   There can be no benevolent intention without the affirmation of a greater and absolute continuity that subsumes the self and the other. The loss of conditionality implied by acting with benevolent intention is therefore simultaneously the process whereby the self is sublimated into this higher order continuity. The extinction of the self in the process of serving the other establishes a higher order subject that subsumes both self and other. This higher order subject is not in the world. The world is in it.

We have concluded that every time I act in the best interest of the other I transcend myself. The effect of this is that the boundary or the apparent boundary between self and other becomes less distinct, so it becomes thinner. Eventually this progresses to an experience which the Sufis refer to as annihilation. In this state the boundaries of the self cease to exist. The self becomes one with the other.

This state of oneness is not only a linguistic device. It is something which is experienced firsthand. When you drop into the nothingness behind your eyes you discover a state that is profoundly connected with everything else in ways that you cannot account for rationally. When you go to the depth of the emptiness that your attention functions from, you find that all phenomena that you can perceive are perceived in a matrix like a bubble that is encapsulated by that emptiness. In this sense the seen does not encapsulate the seer. The seer encapsulates the seen.

How can we even remotely begin to compare the one who is in the world with the one who has the world within him? This is like comparing a gnat with a colossus. They are incomparable. So the prize that is at the end of the journey of escaping your individuality is an experience of vastness and of incalculable and ecstatic connectedness which is in the deepest sense an end in itself. All other ends have as their purpose this end. This end in itself is therefore the zenith, the pinnacle of human experience. This is why we have been created and everything else is a shadow show. The other most extraordinary thing about this is that we all have access to this. This is the human possibility. This is the profound truth about who we are. This thing knows no hierarchy. This highest experience is not reserved for the privileged.

The path to achieving this zenith is a path of service. It is a path engaging the thick of the world, the guts of the world, with the intention to make the world that we are in a better place. It is not ascetic. It is not withdrawn. Now, more than ever historically, this approach is what the world needs. The world doesn’t need more ethereal mystics. That’s not the calling we have. What the world needs now are more people who are profoundly concerned with their immediacy, not with people in Iraq because they are not in my house. It is my immediacy, how can I make my immediacy better? How can I serve the people around me, the people in my immediate circle?

20. 

The more I think I exist as an individual the more I will experience that which is good for them to be bad for me and therefore what is good for me has to be bad for them. Because I have a fundamentally competitive mindset, I am in a win/lose discourse with the people around me. I don’t experience myself to be connected, that there is an energetic relationship between me and the world, that there is a flow. I exist separately as an object.

When I exist as an object the problem is that only one object can occupy a given space at a given point in time. Two objects cannot occupy the same space which means while I consider myself to exist within my boundaries as an object I become competitive by definition. For me to be, you cannot be. For me to be, I have to push you out of the way. There can only be one who is significant here. So the more malevolent I am the more I will experience what’s good for you is bad for me and what’s bad for you is good for me.

The real sadness of this is: why am I so competitive? Why am I trying to muscle in and get you to recognize me? It is because in my heart of hearts I actually want to be connected. I want to be recognized. I want to be loved. But I am pursuing this sense of arrival, connectedness, being affirmed by the other. However, to do this by competing produces exactly the opposite effect. When I compete with you I want affirmation from you but I try to get this by putting you down, demeaning you.

As soon as I say my significance is based on your insignificance it means that in order for you to see me as being significant I’m going to make you small. This does not warmly dispose you towards me. It upsets you which means you now have exactly the same intent towards me to demonstrate just how significant you are and what a rat I am. So this desire I’m pursuing which is to get your love and affirmation, when I’m competing, I end up with exactly the opposite. The chalice that I’m drinking is filled with dust. It doesn’t nurture, it chokes.

We have been put in this bizarre quandary so that we can achieve a connectedness. This connectedness is not the product of being seen, it is the product of seeing. It is not to be found by pursuing significance, it is to be found by granting significance.

People love people who find them interesting. If you deal with another person not on the basis that you are the significant one in a conversation but that they are the significant one, people become deeply enamoured with you. People love no one more than the person who finds them genuinely significant and interesting. Cultivate the habit of granting significance to the other in every situation that you are in and you will discover that they find you enormously attractive. They can’t get enough of your company.

21.  The totality of the other presents itself as vast, majestic and unassailable next to the apparent smallness and insignificance of the self. The attempt of the malevolent self to bend the world to its will is therefore fundamentally futile. When the gnat irritates the giant long enough it gets swatted into oblivion.

As a species we have to understand this. We can’t continue doing this horrendous ecological damage to the world that we’re in. The party is not going to last. At some point the world is going to react and it will react in a way we can’t even begin to imagine. We will not get away indefinitely with what we’re doing. We will not get away with continuously shaking our little fists at existence saying, “We’re in charge!” This is not sustainable. You don’t get away with being an annoying pest in the company of giants indefinitely.

Its best we learn not to pester the giants. We do this by acting in the best interest of the other in every situation we are in. In every situation we grant significance to the other and we make our own significance irrelevant. In every situation we act on the basis of what’s helpful to the other not helpful to ourselves. In every situation we listen rather than talk. In every situation we get up and serve rather than expect to be served. We wash the cup rather than expect the cup to be washed for us. The more profoundly we do this the more we befriend the giants. The less we do this the more irritating we become and hasten our hour of reckoning.

22. 

The self has been created for extinction. Not death – extinction. The self will be obliterated. It will be rubbed out as if it was not. The self I am referring to here is the persona, this idea that you exist as an individual. This does not refer to the perceiver, the observer who looks through the mask of the persona.

We have two choices in the face of impending extinction. We either dance with and in the process of dancing, we experience that who we thought we were, is not who we actually are. You aren’t this individual. You are a far bigger thing that flows through your individuality. When this is the case the loss of your individuality that death implies is neither catastrophic nor unpleasant. It is deeply gratifying.

Or you insist that you exist as an individual in which case your extinction will be horror. The extinction of your individuality, identity and persona is not negotiable. Extinction is your lot as an individual creature like it is for every single individual creature. This is not negotiable. The only thing that is negotiable is your good grace in the process. So if you act consistently with the insight that you don’t exist separately then you become part of something which is bigger than you and which cannot die; which doesn’t become extinct because it is the One Life from which all life comes.

It is very interesting that many religions describe hell as a fire. Further, it is a fire which perpetually burns off your skin only for it to be instantly replaced. Without going into a debate about the nature of the hereafter, this is a very helpful metaphor. When you insist that you exist as an individual your death will be experienced as a perpetual burning off of your boundaries, your skin.

The burning off of your skin is perpetual because at the moment of death you escape time. There are no clocks in the grave. There is no metronomic measure of seconds. That belongs to the realm of the living. The final moment of your life is the final moment. It does not have a moment behind it. It becomes a perpetual continuity. It just means it has escaped time. It is no longer in time. There are no clocks. When you die, when you are finally rubbed out, time ceases for you which means that one moment is an eternal moment.

If stepping into that eternal moment is experienced as a horrifying burning away of your boundaries, that horror does not have a punctuation point behind it. Eternal horror. You have a choice about that eternal moment. It can either be deeply affirming or like a perpetual extinction, a perpetual burning away of your skin, of the boundary which separates you from the world. Horror upon horror!

Constantly acting with the intent to serve is therefore about practising for an eloquent death. However, we need to remind ourselves what we have discovered about the intent to serve thus far:

There are two ways of trying to maintain the boundaries of the self. The one is to dominate and the second is to appease. The transactional essence of domination is “I’m here to get. Shut up and give me what I want. I will brutalize you to suit my own ends.” The transactional patterning of appeasement is “I give to get.” It therefore has as its essence manipulation and the problem with manipulation is that it is deeply sleazy.

If you experience somebody trying to dominate you, you resist them. This is natural because nobody likes to be dominated. When you experience someone who is manipulating you, you not only resist them but you actually counter attack. You seek to do them deep injury because manipulation actually has two damages. Not only are they trying to get something out of you but are treating you like a fool in the process. So there are two hurts here.

You resist me when I’m dominating you I make you deeply hostile to me when I am manipulating you. That’s when people start loosening the wheel nuts on my car – metaphorically – or they start slipping strychnine in my tea, which are all perfectly legitimate strategies for dealing with my deeply unspeakable behaviour. Therefore, serving the other does not mean appeasement. Serving the other doesn’t mean to do things just so that they think you are nice, because that’s giving to get.

Giving to give means I do what is appropriate in the best interest of the other in the situation that I’m in. In the best interest of the other might be a terrible confrontation that they are not going to like. Very often when you do what is appropriate in order to be helpful to the other person you do things to them that they find offensive at the time. Nobody likes being sorted-out. But sometimes people require sorting-out. The appropriate thing to do isn’t to always appease and be nice. In my experience relationship based on appeasement often end up in deep alienation.

Very often the deepest relationships you have are the ones that you really have to struggle with initially. They weren’t easy. They were battles. These relationships are often the most useful relationships, because they enable transformation.

So being here to serve the other doesn’t mean appeasement. It is doing what is the right thing to do, what is in the best interest of the other in the situation that you are in, whatever that means. If that means a confrontation, it is a confrontation. If it is kindness it is kindness.

As we discovered before, acting kindly in the context that requires confrontation is called cowardice. This is taking. Similarly when you confront a situation that requires kindness this is selfishness. This is also taking. But actually the worse of the two is not confronting when things need to be confronted. This is the one that tests you most deeply. In a sense it is easy to civilize a bully. It is a lot more difficult to get some steel into the spine of a coward.

The question may be raised how do I know where to confront or where to walk away? I suspect that the criteria that are operative are true for each individual life and in that sense this is a skill you learn by trial and error, except to say the following: If you have gone into the situation asking yourself what would be helpful to this person or this situation right now, you may not necessarily do what is appropriate but at least you are attempting to do so.

Art accessed from: www.herravendomain.com

I was recently invited to a HR conference where at my behest, I was allowed to present a topic of my choice. I presented ‘God in HR’. If you think the subject was strange, wait till I disclose the agenda. The agenda was:

1. To create CONTROVERSY
2. To create CONFUSION
3. To CHALLENGE the conventional wisdom
4. To get CLARITY

The first three were done by me. But I advised the audience to search for clarity themselves. This was done because I had limited time – and the time required to get clarity is not less than a few years, just in case you are wondering. As Steve Jobs in his famous Stanford Speech said, “Stay hungry! Stay foolish!” I wanted to create hunger in my audience and I wanted them to start thinking foolishly – only then could they challenge the conventional wisdom.

In the conference, I shared some paradigms which the audience apparently found strange, not to my surprise. I talked about HR, about leadership, about money, the mission of an organization, about Balanced Scorecard and about how HR people have been gifted with a tremendous opportunity by the Almighty. In the following lines I will very briefly touch upon the above. I will later delve deeper into the main topic – The Benevolent Scorecard.

Human Resources

When I first attended the Leadership – Care and Growth Model, I being the only HR person was almost ridiculed (read insulted) by the trainer for calling myself ‘Head of Human Resource’. He was actually challenging the paradigm of treating humans as resources. Today I am thankful to him for he is one of those people who taught me the incredible wisdom of thinking foolishly.

Unlike machines which become dead when the clock strikes 5 PM, people continue to live afterwards. Traditional management theories have completely disregarded the fact that we have a much nobler responsibility – that of people. We are so fortunate that God gave us this responsibility, that we have an opportunity to change people’s lives, to make a contribution in their lives.

Leader is the Servant

John Adair wrote a whole book on this theme. The title of the book: “The Leadership of Muhammad” (peace be upon him). He also wrote a hadith (saying of Prophet Muhammad) on the cover page:

“On a journey, the leader of a people is their servant”.

In another hadith, the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) said:

“Each one of you is a custodian and each one of you shall be asked about his (or her) custody”

After reading the book, the idea that a leader is responsible for the care and growth of his people starts making so much sense. The conventional wisdom, on the other hand, says that he has to get results through his people. Put your hand on your heart and tell – which of the two would you like to work for? Again put your hand on your heart and tell – for which of the two would you work harder to deliver results? Unfortunately, most people on leadership positions have taken it upon themselves to rather ruin the lives of those they are made responsible for.

Do we Work for Money or Money Works for us?

Money used to be a resource, wasn’t it? It works for us and not the other way round. God created everything for us (Quran 2:29). But in our blind faith on conventional wisdom, we have completely messed up with the original equation (and started treating humans as resources). We defined the purpose of an organization as ‘Maximization of Profits’, kept beating the drum around human resource being the most important asset and started creating formulas for putting a value to ‘Human Capital’. What are we actually doing? We are treating people as money which can make more money. Which of the statement is correct: Everything exists for humans OR everything exists for money? Everything will fall in place if you can answer that question right.

Balanced Scorecard

For those not yet familiar with the concept, a Balanced Scorecard provides a logical framework for achieving business or financial success. I will not go into details as I am sure you will find plenty on the net. The following figure is but a simple illustration of how the idea works:

If you notice, even in the Balanced Scorecard, the thing at the top is Business or Financial Success. Guess what is at the bottom. I kept looking at it for very long – there was something wrong in it. The ‘foolish’ part of my brain was not comfortable at all. Don’t get me wrong. It is not that I don’t like the BSC concept. I am actually a fan of Kaplan and Norton, those two brilliant people who gave us this extremely useful and logical framework. The only problem is that it is developed on the principles of conventional wisdom. What really matters even in Balanced Scorecard is money. It tells how our plans and strategies in four perspectives should cause us to make more and more money. Period.

When financial success or results are the focus you lose sight of the Present. That is because results are a future activity, an outcome of what you do in the present. Consider the example of a cricket match in which a batsman has to score runs at a moderately high pace. Now instead of looking at the ball his mind is focused at the scoreboard, the number he has to get to win. What is he doing? He is focusing on future; losing sight of the present; and in an attempt to score faster, doesn’t treat the ball on its merit and gets out. That is why we always have the sight screen in front of the batsman so that he can focus on the present i.e. the ball, and the scoreboard is always on the side.

Now let’s start thinking foolishly. What if the higher objective was to make people successful while everything else was designed to achieve that noble objective? It would then sound like this: Having successful people will only be possible if our internal processes are aligned with this objective; and internal processes will only work if our customers are happy with them. If all this is achieved financial success will be a guaranteed outcome – any other possibility becomes difficult to imagine.

Let us take the example of a sales rep. A customer will only be convinced if the internal processes are designed in such a manner that the rep provides a product which is needed, is of good quality, is made available at all points of purchase, and on time. The rep has been provided an appropriate compensation package, caring leader and all the training and resources to ensure that he makes a quality call. The internal processes have also identified the potential customers accurately. With all these processes in place, would it be too difficult to predict a successful sales call? What we have done is that we have put the Balanced Scorecard upside down as under:

The financial scorecard is no more at the top. It is not even considered one of the four perspectives. It is at the side, a lagging indicator of what we are doing in the present. We are now treating people as the purpose not as a resource, while financials have become an indicator of performance.

Even this was less foolish than what I am going to suggest in the next few lines.  

Model leaders are supposed to be simultaneously both exalted and humble, capable of vision and inspiration, yet at the same time dedicated to the service of their people.

If we have agreed that the Balanced Scorecard will work better when the higher objective is to make people successful, what if this success meant more than just financial or career success? Would a genuinely caring manager also not care for the subordinate’s success in his other roles (how can a caring manager not care about this)? If yes than would he not like to keep an eye on how successful he is in those roles.

In such a case, we should be having two indicators of success. One for financial or ‘Material Success’ and the other for ‘Spiritual Success’. The scorecard will then turn into a truly Benevolent Scorecard as illustrated below:

The desire for a Convinced Customer (read God’s pleasure) will drive alignment of my internal processes. If these processes are aligned I will become a successful human being. As a father, mother, son, daughter, brother or sister I will do everything that is required for earning God’s pleasure; similarly as a neighbor, as a friend, as an inhabitant of this planet I will do all that I am meant to do. I will live a meaningful life, a satisfying life. There will be more life in my years than years in my life. And when the time comes to bid farewell, and the appointed angel takes a look at my ‘accountability sheet’ I hope he won’t have to say “What a waste of time!!”

A genuine leader is the one who shows the path to goodness of both the worlds.

Benevolent Scorecard. Any takers?

Muhammad Faisal is an MBA and the Head of HR and Information Systems at Macter International. He has authored ‘The Tablespread of the Holy Prophet (PBUH)’ and has translated several books of reknowned scholars. He can speak English, Urdu and German.