management lessons - Vivekananda

I was going through letters of Swami Vivekananda and was pleasantly surprised to see the depth of his thought process in management principles. We need to understand that we are talking about 19th century end, when scientific management principles were still at the stage of infancy. And nobody in India was aware of principles of modern management, let alone practice them.

Here are some exerpts from Vivekananda's letter to Swami Brahmanand written on 1st August 1898 from Srinagar-

• No job can be learnt without practical experience, theory itself is not sufficient ->we all know how important practical experience is nowadays
• There should always be backups, if somebody goes away, others should be ready to take his work up -> its a perfect example of risk management
• Nobody works unless there is interest and motivation. Everybody should be given work which would interest him/her. With interest comes dedication.->This is the cornerstone of Herzberg's theory of motivation which came much later
• Everybody should have a share in work and property and everybody should get a voice in management -> Again directly related to motivation. It took modern management a long time to realize this.
• Give everybody a responsible position alternately with an eye to watch and control (monitor). Then only we can get a system driven by process ->Without monitoring accountability does not come
• Develop a process/machine which works himself, then people can be found for business and work -> we only had Toyota Production System and TQM in the later half of next century, while this thought existed in the mind of this great man a century ago
• We cannot make a permanent organization because we never like to share power with others and never think of what will come after we have gone -> Isn't it still true of Governments, both democratic and autocratic?