How business is a form of seduction

When King Dashrath’s wives bear him no children and Lompad’s kingdom suffers drought, both are advised to get Rishyashring to perform a yagna. Rishyashring cannot perform a yagna unless he is married and he will not get married because his father, Vibhandak, has raised him without any knowledge of women. In fact, his celibacy is suspected to be the cause of the childlessness and drought that plagues Dashrath and Lompad.

So Lompad’s daughter, Shanta, is sent to the forest to seduce the young celibate sage. She spends hours with him, first pretending to be a sage herself, then gradually introducing him to the idea of gender, and finally by stirring sensual urges in him. Eventually, Rishyashring succumbs. He becomes Shanta’s husband and she brings him to Lompad’s city where he is welcomed with open arms. As a married sage, he conducts yagnas, one that brings rains to his father-in-law’s drought-ridden kingdom, and another that grants Dashrath four sons, including Ram.

Business is about seduction. To increase market size, we have to seduce customers who have never used our product or service. To increase market share, we have to seduce customers away from the competition. Unless Rishyashring is seduced, neither Dashrath nor Lompad can have what they want.

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For generations, Indian kitchens did not have pressure cookers. When they were first introduced in India, no one bought them. Although it cooked food faster and gave the cook more time to do other chores, people saw no value in a pressure cooker. They wondered what the cook would do with that extra time. Besides, experts were convinced that food did not taste as good. To change this mindset, a marketing campaign was created, which showed that a husband who loved his wife would buy her a pressure cooker, thereby making her life a little less stressful. And so went the seduction. Wives began to see pressure cookers as proof of their husbands’ love. The sale of pressure cookers rose phenomenally. Today, pressure cookers are considered a necessity, hardly a luxury. Rishyashring had been seduced.

If strategy is the force, then tactic is the counterforce

Vishnu rides an eagle or garud, and rests on the coils of a serpent or sarpa, which is to say he has both a wide view, as well as a narrow view. His vision is both long-term and short-term. The big picture is garuddrishti, or the bird’s-eye view or strategy. The more detailed, context-specific picture is sarpa-drishti, or the serpent’s eye-view or tactic.

Both these views are demonstrated in the Ramayan. Dashrath’s second queen, Kaikeyi, asks him for the two boons he promised her long ago: that Ram, the eldest son and heir, be sent into forest exile for fourteen years, and that her son, Bharat, be made king instead. When Dashrath informs his sons about this, Ram immediately agrees to go into exile but Bharat does not agree to be king.

Ram agrees because he knows the immediate impact of his decision: the people of Ayodhya will be reassured that the royal family always keeps its promises, however unpleasant. Bharat disagrees because he knows the long-term impact of his decision: no one will be able to point to the royal family as being opportunists and thereby justify future wrongdoing. By demonstrating sarpadrishti and garud-drishti, Ram and Bharat ensure the glory of the Raghu clan.

In contrast, neither view is demonstrated in the Mahabharat. Satyavati refuses to marry the old king Shantanu of the Kuru clan unless she is assured that only her children become kings of Hastinapur. Shantanu hesitates, but his son, the crown prince, Devavrata, takes a vow of celibacy, demonstrating neither sarpadrishti nor garud-drishti.

In the immediate term, both Shantanu and Satyavati are happy. But in the short-term, the kingdom is deprived of a young, powerful king. The old king dies and for a long time the throne lies vacant, waiting for Satyavati’s children to come of age. In the longterm, this decision impacts succession planning. The Kuru clan gets divided into the Kauravs and the Pandavs, which culminates in a terrible fratricidal war.

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When asked why he needed a chief operating officer, Aniruddh told the chief executive officer that he needed someone downstairs to pay attention to quarterly targets and someone upstairs to pay attention to the long-term prospects of the company. “I want the CEO to think of the five-year plans, product development and talent management, not waste his time thinking of how to achieve today’s sales.” Aniruddh knows that there will be tension between the CEO and COO, as the COO will have more control over the present yet will have to report to someone whose gaze is on the future. This tension between the sarpa and the garud was necessary if Lakshmi had to keep walking into the company for a sustained time.

(Reprinted with publisher's permission.)