Contents

Managing Self and Emotional Intelligence : 1

Negotiations and persuasions : 1

Biases : 1

Networks : 1

Role of Mentors : 2

Group Dynamics and Team functioning : 2

Managing Stress. 2

Motivation : 2

Talent Acquisition and Training: 3

Talent Performance Measurement and Control : 3

Handling Conflicts : 4

Diversity within and outside organization - 4

Role of Technology. 4

Conclusion. 5
Introduction

We visited ISKCON, Bangalore to understand people and performance management. Our

study was mainly focused around observing interactions amongst various people there,
including top management; volunteers; executors and visitors. We asked various
questions to people from all these levels, and tried to observe the practical application of
MPPO principles there.

Justification of selecting ISKCON -

People may feel that ISKCON works like a corporate. But, that is not true. Here, people
don’t work for salaries, no one is ever fired and there are no parties. Perquisites are more
intangible than tangible. Hence, everything starting from motivation metrices to
persuasion; emotions management to conflict resolution assums a different tangent. We
observed these throughout our study.

Managing Self and Emotional Intelligence:

We observed that the components of self-awareness and self-regulation were quite high
amongst the people at the temple. They never reacted, always responded. Their aim of
being at the temple was satisfying the highest level of Maslow pyramid, spiritual needs.
While talking to people, it was evident that they were frank in admitting their failures and
emotional imbalances.

Negotiations and persuasions:

A sense of respect that the volunteers have, for full time missionaries (principle of
reciprocity), top management's empathy and support; helped negotiations.
We further observed that several volunteers at the temple had to negotiate with their
families to work for the ‘temple’. The families were initially skeptical about their decisions,
but the volunteers negotiated it by –

1. Finding out why the other side disagreed: The volunteers tried to figure out their
parents’ interests. They realized that the skepticism was arising due to premature
judgement of their families that they are becoming full-time monks and are leaving
the family. To resolve this, they told them that it is only a part time commitment.
2. Arriving at a common ground: The volunteers agreed to spend half of their time at
temple and half of time with their families.

Biases
The temple preaches the art of liberation from the material world. It is believed that every
person might have biases naturally, but what is more important is the awareness of biases
and being away from them during making decisions.

We observed that many people at the temple had left corporate jobs to join the temple.
They had to struggle to avoid conformation bias and re-anchoring bias to corporate life
practices. The spiritual career required a new perspective and way of thinking. To
overcome these biases, they introspected every day and made kaizen improvements. We
also observed that halo effect due to top leadership was minimalistic. People respected
them thoroughly, but tried to understand the reasons behind their orders, rather than
blindly believing what they say.

Networks
Moreover, we observed that there were also some informal networks. Every Sunday,
people from with and within the temple collected to practice “Yoga for Happiness”. They
connected with each other pre and post event. There were also boundary spanners within
the temple. They used their outside networks and brought them in contact with the temple.

Role of Mentors
We also observed that at the temple, mentors played a very important role as a role
models, providing opportunities, emotional support and knowledge. Many volunteers
were inspired by a role model who had more spiritual exposure. Mentors also provided
opportunities to volunteers to conduct workshops on different dimensions. The volunteers
felt obliged to mentors and had immense respect for them.

Group Dynamics and Team functioning:

The temple management is divided into four levels broadly, details on which are
discussed in “Motivation” section of report. We observed that there was a lot of
psychological safety within the management. Everyone, irrespective of their level in the
hierarchy felt free to voice their ideas, even though they might be contradicting to popular
opinion. Lack of fear to be fired from the group or been given lesser opportunities in future
helped. Moreover, everyone tried to understand new viewpoints rather than suppressing
them. The openness and agreeableness quotients were high in their personalities.

The leadership gave all the credit to the devotees for any success while taking
responsibility for failures. Top managements’ empathetic attitude towards lower levels,
motivated employees as they felt responsible for the overall success. The general group
norm was of cooperation and understanding.

Managing Stress

It was a busy Sunday morning and missionaries were quite busy, yet they interacted
calmly with us. They were quite mindful of our questions as well as their on-hand tasks;
and they said the key was meditation and yoga practice. (They said it helped them
manage mental health and emotions). They were less evaluative, judgmental and more
objective to things happening around. We observed similar attitude in other people and
volunteers present there; who handled things quite calmly even in chaos of high people
influx.

Motivation:
We observed that there were three levels of people working at the temple. The motivation
varied across these levels. The first and top level is full time missionaries. They give
spiritual direction to the workings of the temple and live full-time monk life. They have
spiritual motivation (self-purification) and are provided no monetary incentives to stay at
the temple. (Self-Actualization Needs as per Maslow’s need hierarchy).

The second layer are part time missionaries and full-time volunteers. They have adopted
a spiritual outlook in their lives but do not necessarily practice a spiritual life full time.
These people have spiritual motivation (Motivators as per Herzberg’s Theory) as well as
monetary benefits (Hygiene factors as per Herzberg’s Theory) provided by the temple.
They also receive employee benefits in case of genuine monetary needs.

As we have studied, finding and retaining the right people is always a challenge. We
observed the same here. At these two layers, the temple needed people who worked for
a cause (spiritually motivated intrinsically) and not necessarily money.

The third layer is execution level, not requiring spiritual motivation. E.g.: people working
at selling counters. If we consider the Maslow’s triangle, people at this level worked for
survival needs. They needed extrinsic motivation.

Apart from these, the temple also has some volunteers (fourth level). We observed that
their motivation came from their belief in ISKCON’s books.
Overall, Mc Gregor’s Theory Y was followed; giving space for optimistic, participative
employee management.

Talent Acquisition and Training:

We observed that talent acquisition was a challenge at the temple. Inclination towards
the beliefs of ISKCON was observed while hiring at first two levels. We observed that
money is not the sole motivator at the organization and spiritual happiness is what
motivated the people more.

At the lowermost levels, like security function; outside agencies were provided contracts.

We observed that they do not believe in the 14-16 hours work culture as prevalent in most
of the firm today. 8 hours was the general work duration. They give a lot of importance to
the employee’s personal life.

For training, leadership is always available for guidance. For new recruits, training
programmes based on scriptures like Bhagvad Gita were conducted.

Talent Performance Measurement and Control:

For performance management, there were quarterly reviews where Key Performance
Indicators (objective and standardized) were discussed upon. It was like Gurukula
system, where people at the top tried to identify what is the 100% of every individual and
assigned roles accordingly. This was to ensure that deindividualization does not occur.
Self-discovery was being stimulated so that people discover what their 100% of effort is.
The ideology is that every person has varying level of capabilities and if similar targets
are given like that in organizations, some employees would be dissatisfied with their
relative performance and will start doubting their self-worth. This helps in individualized
review which focuses on enhancing future performance rather than talking of past. This
also helped remove idiosyncratic raters' effect.

In case of non-accomplishment of their 100%, people at layer 1 and 2 were not fired.
Instead, top management tried to understand what the root cause is – lack of spiritual
motivation/health/being mis-fit to that role. There were regular dialogues to link personal
interest to temple workings. We observed that the top management had an attitude of
considering the right people as an asset and making efforts to retain them. Sometimes
new roles were created to fit the right people.

Handling Conflicts:
For conflict resolution, their approach resembled Thomas Kilmann’s Conflict Mode
Instrument Approach (Collaborate dimension). Out of four possible ways, ISKCON
believes in reaching win-win always. Among the top two layers, conflicts arrived mainly
due to different viewpoints on a project. They were resolved via principle of arriving at a
common ground. Both parties were reminded of their similar core spiritual values, and
arrived at a way which both believe, leads them to their cause of helping self and society.
For the second level, obedience to seniors (based on spiritual advancement), also gained
precedence to conflicts.

At the lower levels, conflicts were tough to resolve since they were related to basic
survival needs of the Maslow’s triangle. To take care of these conflicts, either monetary
incentives were offered, or interpersonal skills of persuasion were used. BATNA offered
them was transfer to different departments within, based on their interests/skills.

Diversity within and outside organization -

The temple was diverse in terms of geography, however, the Governing Body Council
(GBC) which is the highest level of management is dominated by Males. Employees are
from different regions; and hence important matters were reproduced in various
languages. Regarding the safety of women employees, certain rules have been laid out,
such as celibate men limit their interaction with a women devotee in privacy. There are
around 60-70 women who volunteered (no salary basis) on weekends to serve as
‘matajis’ taking care of children coming to temple programme.

So far as people visiting the campus is concerned, there was diversity in the social class.
We observed that the temple provided equality to all visitors, in terms of ‘darshanam’. (No
segregation on basis of gender, cate etc.) The concept of VIP queue was to cater to
individuals who have an urgency and can afford to pay for their own urgency. Say, Lt. Dr.
A.P.J Abdul Kalam had just 15 minutes turnaround time to visit the temple, when he came
to Bangalore.
Role of Technology
We found that the organization was modern in its approach towards its reach to the devotees
through information technology. They have presence online through websites, social network
pages and phone apps. The users get notified about any important events organized by ISKCON
with respect to Sri Krishna. This draws parallelism with the principles of nudge theory which aims
to use judgmental heuristics to the advantage.

Another reason for their online presence is to target the youths who are distracted and
spend a considerable amount of time with modern gadgets. They feel that with this
presence they can reach out to them and make them aware about their movement.

Conclusion and Recommendations-

We concluded that the temple applied many principles of MPPO for a smooth functioning .

We felt that following points may add more value to organization-

 Adding Women in Top Management

 Recruiting talent through campus placement programs of IITs, IIMs etc.
 Spread more spiritual awareness, and awareness about ISKCON through
conduction of programs at educational institutes.
 Motivate creation of informal networks by organizing activities like picnics,
involving all levels of management