We have all heard about the importance of organizations having well-understood values and using those values in day-to-day decisions and strategic planning. But it is often hard to discern if or how organizations are doing this. I write today about a particular event in my life that I will never forget, where I witnessed an organization using its values as scaffolding for strategic planning about conflict management.
I am a longtime ombuds and also a professor of negotiation theory and conflict management. In 2014, I had been consulting occasionally to ISKCON Resolve. ISKCON Resolve is part of a global, integrated conflict management system for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. Their global integrated system began in 2002—the only one of its kind in a worldwide faith-based organization.
The event I refer to happened in 2014, when Sesa Dasa was pondering his coming role as chairman of the Governing Body Commission (GBC) of ISKCON. He had convened a small group for strategic planning many months before his accession. Sesa had called a meeting with Bob Cohen and Brian Bloch, the co-directors of ISKCON Resolve.
I was told that Sesa was taking some months to think very deeply about his coming service as CEO. He was somberly aware of the huge importance of leadership in a worldwide faith with millions of adherents.
We met at a home in Washington, D.C., a de facto guesthouse for ISKCON-DC, with several of us sitting around a small kitchen table for a day and a half. Sesa and the others talked for hours, very soberly and thoughtfully. Sesa and the others had prepared a short but deep agenda, thinking about the mission of the faith and their responsibilities in the face of many concerns and conflict arising within the faith and outside it. Brian took careful notes and skillfully offered backup documents as needed.
As a consultant on conflict management, I sat at the table… a little bit back. Gopinath Bloch, 24-year-old son of Brian Bloch, likewise sat a little bit back, respectful and attentive. I listened quietly to the choice of questions raised by each of the older men. I was quickly engaged by the depth, scope, and integrity of Sesa’s reflections during these discussions and began to take a few notes.
In negotiation theory, one guideline for addressing conflicts and concerns is to begin by thinking about the principles that should guide resolution of the issues. I was drawn in by Sesa’s personal mode of addressing the challenges he would face as a CEO. He often stopped to think for a minute or two and spoke slowly. As I saw it, he was iteratively examining facets of an issue, and then, indeed, discussing one or another principle for beginning to address each facet.
At the end of the second day, I was asked about thoughts I might have had. Picking up from my notes, I humbly offered a brief list of topics that were addressed, and a brief list of what I had thought to be Sesa’s principles in examining each topic. For example, he asked, many times, from whom should he be seeking information? On what basis should decisions be made when there are devotees all over the world? How could the GBC know what people of different backgrounds, at all levels, felt about certain issues? How would he find out what devotees and leaders thought—to provide options, and a choice of options for the GBC—in the decisions that would take place the coming year?
He spoke about the importance of the principle of trying to do good, or at the least “no harm.” That is, whenever a question came up when there was a decision to be made, “what was the best that could happen—at the least cost/least harm to anybody? At the least disruption to anybody’s life?” He talked about leading by example, by means of what, at the moment, I had thought of as “role modeling.”
I was impressed throughout with Sesa’s strength and humility as a leader. It seemed clear that he was strong and capable as a leader but thought himself as a servant. He was particularly concerned with the relationships that people had with each other, throughout ISKCON and the GBC. What was most important was the caring—and respect for each other’s dignity—that people have with each other.
I tried to present in my brief list what I had understood to be the principles that Sesa was following, over and over, as different topics came up.
When I stopped talking there was a long moment of silence. Then, breaking the silence, Gopinath suddenly stood up behind me—he also had simply listened all day—and said, very clearly: “Those are the Gita Values!” It was an extraordinary moment for me personally. The others understood of course what Gopinath meant. I, however, had much to learn.
In wanting to understand more, I asked for specifics. The group of us then turned to Skype to discuss my humble list with a major teacher in ISKCON, Shaunaka Rishi Das, Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and Hindu chaplain to Oxford University. He kindly heard the brief list of what I had heard from Sesa. He then discussed each one of the values from the sacred Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita that underlay what I had taken to be principles for decision-making.[2]
I was startled and moved by what Gopinath had said. I found his insight, and the occasion, the more extraordinary when I had the chance to listen at length to Shaunaka and the others. I learned about Sama-darshana, (Equal Vision) and Iccha (Choice), Bhakti (Devotional Service), Acharya (Teaching by Example), Priti, (Affection), Amanitva, (Humility) and Ahimsa (Without Harm) and the specific importance of each of these values in illuminating what I had heard for a day and a half of discussion.
I think of this day every time I hear that the mission and core values of an organization should guide an organization. It had been a rare chance—in real life—to hear values clearly and specifically informing the everyday thinking and decision-making and leadership of a CEO.
[1] Everyone mentioned in this essay has approved its publication.
[2] See https://www.iskconofdc.org/gitavalues, at the “click here” button to see a copy of the values discussed here.
Mary Rowe (@mroweOO) is an Adjunct Professor of Negotiation and Conflict Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She served for almost 42 years as an organizational ombuds reporting directly to five presidents of MIT.