Today morning I was going through the excerpts of the views expressed by Indra Krishnamoorthy Nooyi, the high profile lady President and the CEO of the multibillion, multinational soft drink company of the world-PepsiCo, that the Times of India published.
The views expressed by this lady CEO essentially highlight the high work load of a CEO and the problems that such persons face in their lives due to paucity of time for the home and family especially when the CEO happens to be woman. The lady CEO is in the dominant role of the boss at her work place but has to be in the conventionally submissive family role of a daughter, wife and mother at home!
Coping up with these mutually antagonistic roles is not an easy task, according to Ms.Nooyi. She has been 'trying all kinds of coping mechanisms'.
As compared to the men, the women have additional problems.
'The biological clock and the career clock are in conflict with each other'. Indra Nooyi admits from her experience.
So having all the benefits of the career and the family in one go is very difficult for the women. Women simply can't have it all!
So, those women who can't cope with all these either sacrifice the career or some thing of their family life!
Otherwise they have to do the continuous balancing act consciously through out their lives just as the trapeze artists. It is indeed a risky game of life! You simply can't enjoy a high profile career and a good and satisfied family life simultaneously, unless you are prepared to do some adjustments!
But is it an exclusive problem of the women alone? I think, men also can't have it all without doing the trapeze acts! But unlike the women, they prefer not to complain because of their male egos. Perhaps there won't be any one to listen to their problems.
Biologically men and women are to become complementary pairs to form the basic unit of mankind, the family. They are naturally made for different functions to complete the human functions. They are not made for doing the same functions!
Thus both husband and wife cannot be both heads of the same family at the same time. Life becomes smooth and natural when men and women go according to their natural designs.
CEO's by nature are people who have the first degree priority attached to career growth and official work regardless they are men or women. All of them face the dilemma of prioritization of priorities of life and have willfully chosen career as the first priority over others. That is how they have become the CEO's. But having accomplished that they have to cope up with the pressures of prioritization of priorities!
They have to do the cope up acts, the balancing acts, the sacrificial acts and many such things which are difficult for normal human beings. Many CEO's thus become naturally abnormal as a consequence of their balancing acts!
But all bosses are essentially minor replicas of God on earth.
If they knew something of the great secrets of God, perhaps they could have accomplished all their tasks much easier.
Because God is the Supreme CEO of the Universe and yet He copes up with all the CEO pressures so easily without any one ever noticing it.
Our management gurus know much about the power of delegation and mentoring in management whether it is management of the family, small business, big business or even the governments.
But we are all with human weaknesses and that prevent us from perfectly practicing what we know.
Most CEOs fail utterly in delegating work and authority. They fail utterly in mentoring people to perform and progress. They keep indulging in others work because they fail to trust people even after delegation, making their delegation degrade to pseudo-delegation.
Have you ever seen the Universe CEO interfering in your life? God has delegated you free will for all decisions and choices. Having done that, God will not interfere in your free will in any way even while He possesses all powers to do that.
And imagine the problems of God, had He been to solve the problems of all in the universe even after he delegating the powers of solving the problems to all below! But God is perfect and He never changes the rules in between, even while He has the powers to do all that.
And just imagine the situation, when the human CEOs ( we are all CEOs in one way or other for some situation) trying to imitate God and work as true replicas of God on earth by truly using the God given powers wisely! Perhaps then, the work of others would not shift unfavorably to a few others, making imbalances in our human relations.
Perhaps we might tend to become a society in true progress with less and less individual problems.
Neither Indra Nooyi nor any others like her need not be over worked and without paucity of time, provided they know how to delegate responsibilities to those who are capable of discharging those responsibilities equally well.
A good leader or boss knows the art of distributing his or her powers and responsibilities to each and every individual down below in the team commensurate with their individual capacities to make use of those delegation effectively.
When the boss does delegation of authority and responsibility improperly, the organization fails to perform adding to the woes of the boss.
In the family too, such delegation of work and responsibilities is to be implemented with much care. If done well, the family too would become a smooth running mini organization.
When every one is enabled to perform according to their inherent capacities we get complimentary families and organizations that run well without causing problems to others.
At least, things would be better and bosses may not be required to devote more time than their subordinates to make their organizations perform.
The gender of the boss would not make any difference too!
