Warning: Touchy-Feeling Zen Management Post

Stumbled upon this while reading Business Pundit the other day. Find myself going back to the article over and over again. Probably because it appeals to me on a couple different levels: as a manager, and a yogi - you don't get too many discussions of the importance of breathing and management. The subject of the article is Jagdish Parikh, (Harvard Business School MBA '54) is a director of the Lemuir Group of Companies in Bombay, India, as well as Allied Lemuir, DHL Danzas Lemuir, and TechNova Group of Companies.

Breath is a life force, he continued. If managers try to maintain awareness of their own pace and depth of breathing, it could help them observe a difficult situation from a new perspective.

Stress - got a lot of it where I work. The busier you are - the more successful you seem to some. Those that can't handle stress are seen as not having what it takes to make it in the business world. For example, I've told my manager that I might be having "Mood Issues" but they are related to Thyroid problems, and they now see under control. Never would admit to depression or being on Zoloft. (FYI - I am now off Zoloft but that's the subject of another post.)

Does stress make you strong?

"Does stress bring out the best in us?" Parikh asked. Many executives, he said, buy into the myth that being stressed-out is an asset and means they are dedicated to their job—they use stress as rocket fuel. Parikh said he too adopted this mindset when he was an MBA student. As a child he had been taught the opposite by his family: that the most important thing in life was to be happy and content, to do his best but not fret about the results. But at business school the mantra was "Don't ever feel satisfied." Stress, he was told, would help him set goals and reach them.

Gotta love anyone who distrusts corporate vision statements:

Corporate vision statements are fine, he said, but most statements of this kind are so general and so vague as to be virtually meaningless. You could mix up various companies' vision statements and no one would be able to tell the difference, he said. Few of them possess the power to mobilize the energies of employees within a company.