ON TEAM-WORK AND YES-MEN
PROF.
WILLIAM HOOKENS
Today
we are torn between Co-operation and Competition and in our rush for modernism
and progress we are inclined to forget the masters of the past who saw ahead of
their times and could be almost masters to us and direct us if we are so
inclined. There was John Ruskin, for example, who thought co-operation was life
and that competition meant death–and his views on life as much as economics,
politics and art are worth consideration. For though we are living in a very
different era from his, human nature is the same, and efficiency or progress is
based on human nature and the value we attach to humans as such. Ruskin’s Sesame
and Lillies and Queen’s Garden are books I
read with interest at school, and as for his Seven Lamps of Architecture, I
believe, it is a book that can be read by artists as much as laymen for the
truths he propunds. I remember reading his works at Ruabon in
Are
we not, I hear an objector say, are we not in an age of sputniks and space men,
and don’t we need to think and feel differently from old John Ruskin’s? Much as
we are sputnik-minded we cannot help being ourselves: we yet want sex and we
yet want war; and in the absence of co-ordinating
factors in our lives we are just lost. I am, therefore, of the opinion that a
good deal can be said for old things that give place to the new, with a
continuity (not a break or a jolt) that makes for healthy tradition and, what
is more important, to sane living. Old things were once young–and the young things
will one day be old and history is the story of the past with lessons for the
future.
There
was a time when someone who knew the job and was big enough to hold it, held
together his men in what is known as the co-operative spirit. He was no humbug
and really loved his men and saw to it that they were well. If one of his men
failed to turn up, out went the boss in his car or his push-bike (bosses then
used push-bikes oftener than they do now and had no swank about them) to the
lad’s place (all men were called lads and felt like lads, rather than being
premature grand-fathers, with sorry faces) and got the story straight from the
horse’s mouth. If the lad’s wife was ailing, the boss would see to it that she
was well cared for and he’d go personally to see her and take the lad with him
to the hospital where she was. “Cheer up, boy!” he’d say. “Your wife is looking
fine. I haven’t seen any kids of yours, now don’t say
you are planning?” And the lad would smile from ear to ear. “No, boss,” he’d
say, “you see the wife’s on the weak side and we don’t want problem children on
our hands!” “No” he’d say and smile and later on he’d get the lad a few tins of
Ovaltine and Cod-liver Oils and hand him a blank cheque. “Get what you want, son, and don’t worry about the bills.
If your wife’s well, you are well and if you are well, the work’s, going to be
fine. Understand? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve got the money and am the
boss because I know a little more than you do–and for this I’ve got to thank
the good God and my parents and my school. Well, we’ve got to do good if good’s
been done to us. There’s no fun in getting good done and stopping doing good
because you’re aren’t in the mood to do good. You see, son, among the Hindus
they believe that Son means ‘redemption’ that is, redeemed from hell. And the
debt that the son owed to the father is paid back when he himself has a son and
so goes on the story of repaying the good done to you. Or where’s the fun of
living or the sense in continuity? We must maintain it rather than cut of the
roots and find ourselves hanging mid-air!” I don’t pretend to have
tape-recorded the talk but I believe (and most of my contemporaries, including
heads of departments, principals, ministers and millionaires, will agree that
the capital-labour relationship was cordial because
of this personal note) that an understanding between the boss and his men is
extremely necessary if work is to be done efficiently.
I
remember (and I am reminiscing rather than preaching which I don’t like) my Principal
take me under his wings when I joined the college
where I was a student. “I’m glad you were in station when I called for you.
You’re joining tomorrow, unless you have something important to do. And my
colleagues will give you all the possible help. You won’t be alone!” And he
shook my hands in such a cordial manner than I’d sacrifice anything for him.
When I joined duty next day there were my colleagues (formerly my good teachers
and friends) who were anxious to help me; and there was nothing which I wanted
and which they failed to accede to do. In course of time I began to feel more
confident of myself and took initiative in matters that called for personal
initiative; and when I made mistakes I was called to the Head’s office and told
what had been done and why, and I saw the whole mistake clear before my eyes
and was not rebuked for it because I was young and only the young make mistakes
and progress through them. The pity with the old is that they make no mistakes nor progress and are hindered from making both
by a vigilant eye and a sharp tongue of the head! I cannot forget the paper in
Literary Criticism which I was doing under a Professor who was an Indian who
had travelled widely on the Continent and loved things of spirit. He had
visited the rishis of the South and the North of
India and had seen the great sages of the west and he was humble in spirit. He
had been within the portals of
And
so I see all along the line of success or efficiency the team spirit not only
works but acts as an incentive to more work and progress. And it is only when
the boss does not buckle down and work with his colleagues that things do not
go to plan. Fear is not efficacious as Love; and Human Nature is not that red
in tooth and claw that we need Machiaevelians at
every step to help us out. In fact, very much of the success or failure in work
depends on the top-man or top-men: if the top-men are sound, the others must be
sound. In the Army there’s a saying that there are no bad men but bad officers;
and whenever there’s a cause for failure the top-men are taken to task. Or why
have these top-men when they do not know their job or men? It is not enough
knowing your job if you do not care to know about the men who work with you.
And the art of getting-on-with-people is best learnt by knowing them and what
they want. People, whether they are Indians, French, Germans or British, know
when they have a man to deal with and when they have a monster on their hands.
They also know when they have a man who knows the job and a mouse who has crept
in from the backdoor. In fact, a man, irrespective of whether he is a boss or
an ordinary worker (excuse the epithet, ‘ordinary’) is always a man: he does
not lose his sense of pride or control, nor is he rude or bad-mannered unless
his liver or his wife is out for long, nor is he mischievous by nature and
always putting people in the wrong. A good boss invariably takes on himself the
sole responsibility of the wrongs done by his men and that he’s a good boss
(not soft, mind you, but human) who helps him to always get his work done in
A-1 condition. He appeals to the best in his men.
Somehow,
with the advent of freedom, we have begun to change and there is no harm in
changing but we must needs change in such a way as
will bring out the best of the people. This is, unfortunately, not being done.
Today we see our own men and women kicking us on no other plea than that we are
no good! And we sometimes wonder why they have such
airs when they are no better than we are, nor have they anything really,
intrinsically superior, except their technique at knowing the right men for the
right jobs. Wanting leadership does not mean ignoring others who aren’t
leaders. All cannot be leaders and in a country like ours when those who want
leadership want at every step to speed up progress, we cannot help feeling that
there’s something radically wrong with our sense of leadership. Does leadership
mean getting all the good things of this earth for me and depriving others of
their right share? Does leadership mean so treating humans as though they were
slaves? Whether we are the boss or ordinary workmen, we are Indians, citizens,
and no one has the right to put anybody down unless, of course, he deserves it,
like criminals, lunatics or spies. But I have seen (and so have you) where the
presence of a car, a bungalow, a certain grade or salary entitles people to
rule the roost. They are the Boss. They not only feel it. They look it (like
the portrait of Potato-humans of Van Gosh), pot-bellied, lazy, bossy or
officious. Even their wives and children so behave as if the land belongs to
them and all others are just aliens! Western people to
whom power means power for the good of the people, begin to laugh at us for our
folly, our immaturity. For who, in his senses, expects people to bow down and
feel he is a slave when he is a human (and in a democracy) as good as anyone
else?
I
have seen in Britain men go up to the employment exchange and demand a job of
the man at the counter and often these men who want work are downright checky and come with their hats on (why should they take
them off, they say, when they are all equal and belong to a Welfare State?) And
no one in
Life
is like a huge factory where every single unit counts and nothing is too
insignificant or useless. Every single worker, be he working upstairs or at the
bottom of the floor, every single worker has the conviction of a man and all
work with duty as their keynote. No one is too great or too small: the work’s
got to be done and it’s got to be done in team-wise spirit. And there’s no need
to pull anyone up because he is a man (and not a monkey) and is conscious of
his duty and responsibility by the boss for whom he is working. In Britain and
the West you are never let down by the people who work with you or under
you because they know you and like you: but here in India
the boss seldom or never meets the men he’s working with nor does he go out to
clubs or to places where people congregate. Here, I am afraid, people are too
status-conscious to feel or move about with ease: and naturally when the post
is bigger than the man who’s under it, so to speak, there’s bound to be
tensions, lock-outs, rudeness, fights, bad confidentials. Such bosses can’t work in
team spirit: they want yes-men–fawners, boot-lickers,
men without backbones: lostmen.
It
is a truism that if you can’t get on with men whom you know you can’t get on
with those whom you don’t know–and in a country like India where we have people
of all castes and creeds (India’s a Continent on her own and not an Island),
the need to know and understand the people is greater because we have to move
on from mediaevalism to modernism; and this means a
good deal of adjustments. And in a country that was once caste-ridden, it would
be futile to continue it by subtler forms of caste systems as are beginning to
be too often prevalent through the length and breadth of the country. Foreign
tourists come to see our temples and homes, palaces and museums, and if are in
love with things and people ancient and do not love the living people around us
and give them scope for improvements in the jobs they are in, if we treat them
as so many galley-slaves, are we any better than those who practise
Apartheid or are for the continuation of the Colour
Bar?
Where
we differentiate between man and man on grounds of colour,
creed or caste, status or pay, we are no better than worms that crawl on the
earth–and for such, the good things of earth and heaven are never near, though
near.