What is business but the result of how the market behaves and how the organization behaves? And if you look at cultures around the world, all you have to do is understand the mythology and you will see how they behave, and how they do business.
Chief Believe Officer Devdutt Pattanaik takes you to 26 B.C. on the banks of a river called the Indus, now in Pakistan. This river lends itself to India's name. India. Indus.
Alexander, a young Macedonian, met there what he called a "gymnosophist," which means the naked, wise man. Alexander asked, "What are you doing?" and the gymnosophist answered, "I'm experiencing nothingness." Then the gymnosophist asked, "What are you doing?" and Alexander said, "I am conquering the world." And they both laughed. Each one thought that the other was a fool.
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Two different mythologies. Which is right? Two different ways of looking at the world. One linear, one cyclical. One believes this is the one and only life. The other believes this is one of many lives. And so, the denominator of Alexander's life was one. So, the value of his life was the sum total of his achievements. The denominator of the gymnosophist's life was infinity. So, no matter what he did, it was always zero.
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And that brings us to the mythology of business. If you live only once, in one life cultures around the world, you will see an obsession with binary logic, absolute truth, standardization, absoluteness, linear patterns in design. But if you look at cultures which have cyclical and based on infinite lives, you will see a comfort with fuzzy logic, with opinion, with contextual thinking, with everything is relative, sort of -- mostly.
November 2009