The first thing about this book is that it is interesting. It is interesting in the
theme, or rather the web of themes, it takes up; in the questions and dilemmas
it examines and, where necessity confronts without inhibition or cant or
self-consciousness; in its freedom from play-it-safe, much
–to-be-said-on-both-sides conventional thinking, And it is interesting also in
its assured tone and voice, its ability to engage general as well as specialist
readers and, from time to time , surprise them with its findings., hypothesis,
and assertions.
It is no idle boast that the book title makes when it
promises to reveal the secret, or rather the webs of secrets, of that fascinating
mix of the abstract and the concrete that is commonly known as leadership. Awdhesh Singh drills
straight into his subject without fuss or the kinds of oversimplification
combined with jargon-filled equivocation that management gurus seem so fond of when
they seek to impart domain wisdom in print. Listen to the author’s no-nonsense
definition of his subject matter in the Introduction:
Leadership is a game that you must learn to win by using all
means at your disposal. In leadership, winning is everything. It is not about
principles, but only results. It matters not what a leader does, as long as he
is effective. On the contrary, if you fail to achieve visible success, you are
not accepted as a leader despite all your talents and commitment to the cause.
I used the terms, ‘web of secrets’ and ‘web of themes’,
advisedly. Leaders, the author asserts, are “quite mysterious” creatures; they
“hide more than they reveal,” including mortal danger “like an iceberg.” The
challenge therefore is to “understand the leaders for what they are, inside
out.” As for the web of themes, the Contents pages list so many subjects that
you start the book by wondering if the author is going to roam too freely
across too wide a field. But reading the book, you discover that this is an
ambitious work of analysis, of philosophizing, and of exposition with the aid
of concrete examples, anecdotes, and some striking quotations drawn from a
variety of fields. And the surprise at the end of the book is that it does
deliver on the promise of the title, by yielding a debatable and testable model
of what constitute leadership, what leadership is about, “inside out.” I use
“debatable” in a positive sense, of course.
I think The Secret Red
Book of Leadership works, against the odds, thanks to the clear-headed and
hard-nosed way in which the author approaches a much-studied subject and also
thanks to the overall plan and organization of the book. The author presents
his analysis , hypothesis, findings and reflections in 34 chapters grouped
under six interconnected parts, (1) The Need of Leadership, (II) Dilemma of
Leaders, (III) The Necessary Evils of Leaders, (IV) The Façade of Leaders (V) Developing
Leadership, and (VI) Practising Leadership
I found myself drawn particularly to Part (II), “Dilemma of
Leaders” There is a very interesting discussion of the ‘”eternal” philosophical
questions of ends and means, ends versus means, ends over means, ends as means,
ends leading to other ends in a never-ending historical process. It is central
dilemma for leaders. Listen to these passages from “The Secret Red Book of
Leadership”
“You have to decide if a ‘good end by evil means’ is better
than ‘good means that lead to an evil end’. This is a difficult decision, but
unavoidable in the real world. It is tough to win fairly when your opponent is
using all types of unfair means….In real life, every end is actually a
beginning for another end. Hence, there are actually no ends; each end is
nothing but a means to the next end. Therefore, if the end is good, it implies
that the means are also good.”
“A wise leader knows that ends are more important than means.
It does not imply that leaders have to necessarily travel on an evil path to
achieve noble ends, but if they have to traverse that route for some time, they
would not hesitate to do it for a noble end. This is the ultimate sacrifice a
leader must make. For a leader, there is nothing good or evil; he tries to stay
above these distinctions. He aims only at the result and achieves them for his
followers—by all means, be it good or evil”.
These are provocative assertions; you may agree or disagree
with the author. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a great leader by the standards of
any age, had a quite different view of the matter, as the author points out at
the outset. But the point is that you need to approach this perennially debated
issue on its own merits, by closely examining the principles at stake as well
as their relationship to the real world. You can test the prepositions advanced
in this book in relation to the life histories of great leaders, transformers
of institutions and societies such as Henry VIII, Oliver Cromwell, Robespierre,
Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, Deng Xiaoping, Gandhi, Nehru, Netaji and others from more recent
times. But you cannot resolve the problem by falling back on conventional
wisdom, especially when it comes to figuring out how great or true leaders have
thought about and handled this perennial dilemma.
Equally interesting is The
Secret Red Book’s examination of the connectedness, and indeed inseparability,
of good and evil and what it means for leadership, “inside out”. To understand
the background to this fairly brief chapter, you need to read to another
publication, a slim volume comprising twenty essays by the author titled “Good
and Evil: Two Sides of the Same Coin” and published earlier this year. But let
me not give away the argument here, nor the reasoning leading to the conclusions
presented in the other chapters, on key questions revolving around the constitutive
elements of leadership such as “Burning desire to Lead and Achieve”, “The
Hunger for Power,” “The Propaganda War”, “Developing Imagination,”, “Developing
Courage”, “Creating Trust,” and so on.
What’s left, you might wonder. What’s left, in a figurative
as well as literal sense, is what has possibly been the defining question for
leadership down the ages, “Leaving a Legacy.” The qualifier “great,” or its equivalent
in other language, is one of the most overused and misused words in any
language. But no one, I think, can reasonably dispute the author’s conclusion
that “a leader become great when”—and let me emphasize, only when he or
she—“leads large number of people to a common goal based on a common ideology…
Great leaders leave great legacies that influence future generations.”
I hope these remarks have kindled in you a real interest in
the web of themes, questions, and dilemmas brought together and examined in the
book being launched today, and a desire to buy the book and read it seriously
and critically.
(Mr N Ram delivered this keynote speech during the launch function of "The Secret Red Book
of Leadership" in Chennai on 18th December 2014. Mr K Srikkant (Former
Indian Cricket Captain) and T S Krishnamurthy (Former Election Commissioner of
India) were the Honorable Guests of Honour for the function. )
About Mr N Ram
Mr. N. Ram, Chairman of Kasturi & Sons Ltd., Publisher, The
Hindu and Group Newspapers, and former Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu,
Frontline magazine, Business Line daily, and Sportstar
weekly of The Hindu group of publications, has been in the media field
since 1966.
His areas of special journalistic interest include Indian
politics; aspects of India’s foreign policy and nuclear policy; external
pressures on India’s economic and political sovereignty; issues of corruption
and abuse of power; the challenge of communalism and fundamentalism in India;
the Sri Lankan ethnic crisis and India’s interaction with it; freedom of
expression issues, and the role of media in society.
Ram led The Hindu’s investigation into the Bofors
arms deal corruption scandal; and before that (in 1980-81), did an extended
investigation and analysis of the conditionalities of India’s controversial SDR
5 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) arrangement with the International Monetary
Fund.
His investigation of the Bofors scandal, in association with
Chitra Subramaniam and others in The Hindu, was recognized by Columbia
University’s Graduate School of Journalism during its centennial celebrations
in 2012 as one of ‘50 Great Stories
reported, investigated, produced, filmed, edited, photographed, anchored,
and/or tweeted by Columbia journalists’ over the century
(http://centennial.journalism.columbia.edu/50-great-stories/).
Honours and awards include the Padma Bhushan (for journalism),
1990; the Asian Investigative Journalist of the Year Award from the Press
Foundation of Asia (1990); the B.D. Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism
(1989); the National Citizen’s Award (1995); XLRI’s First JRD Tata Award for
Business Ethics (2002); and Sri Lanka Ratna, Sri Lanka’s highest National Honour conferred on non-nationals
(2005).
Ram is co-author with Susan Ram of the biography, R.K.
Narayan: The Early Years, 1906-1945, Penguin India, New Delhi, 1996; and
the author of Riding the Nuclear Tiger, a Signpost publication, LeftWord
Books, New Delhi, 1999. His research publications include studies of ``The
Nuclear Dispute: An Indian Perspective’’ and ``An Independent Press and
Anti-Hunger Strategies: The Indian Experience,’’ the latter published in a
book, The Political Economy of Hunger, Volume-1: Entitlements and Well-being,
ed. Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1990. A 15,000-word
essay, ``The Great Indian Media Bazaar: Emerging Trends and Issues for the
Future,’’ has been published in India: Another Millennium? edited by
Romila Thapar, Viking, Penguin India, New Delhi, 2000.
________________________________________________________________________________
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Leadership"?
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