MONDAY MUSINGS SEASON 2 - EPISODE 254
Importance of Meritocracy
25th March 2024
WISHING HAPPY HOLI TO ALL THE READERS
Holi is the festival of happiness. Let this holi bring us eternal bliss in our lives.
I hope that high performance workforce is assigned superior work, mediocre with mediocre works and inferior servants in insignificant works. Valmiki Ramayan 2-100-25
Lord Ram stressed the importance of meritocracy in an organization through the above sloka. The references to superior, mediocre and inferior servants here are not with respect to their caste, nor with respect to their social status but with reference to meritocracy. Lord Ram’s advice to Barath is that ‘Leaders should recognize meritocracy for the organization to succeed.
#Meritocracy
Dictionary definition of meritocracy is a system in which people get success or power because of their abilities, not because of their money or social position. In terms of an organization, meritocracy is the recognition of employee’s abilities or performance rather than their position in the hierarchy.
Though Valmiki referred to the concept of meritocracy in thretha yuga, the term 'meritocracy' was coined by British sociologist #MichaelYoung in 1958 in his book #TheRiseOfTheMeritocracy, ironically in a satirical context, to warn against the tyranny of a system overly reliant on IQ testing and academic achievement. Over time, however, the term lost its satirical undertone and gained positive connotations, especially in corporate environments.
In the modern workplace, fostering a truly meritocratic culture demands robust accountability, transparent processes, and a shift away from power dynamics. Embracing open communication and collaborative intelligence is not just desirable but imperative.
Developing meritocracy as a culture ensures that leaders down the line do not create power centers, rather they build collaborative teams. Leaders across the organization listen to the workforce, recognize performance, reward merit and celebrate success. Organisations that embrace the meritocratic ethos believe everyone has an equal chance to advance and obtain rewards based on their individual merit and efforts— regardless of their gender, race, class, or other non-merit factors such as seniority, position of power, etc.
Lord Ram himself personally encouraged meritocracy. He recognized and rewarded merit wherever possible.
In Mahabharat, Duryodhan sprang a surprise by recognizing merit and recruiting Karnan to his side and rewarding his skill by making him the king of Angad though Karna hailed from lower caste. That is meritocracy.
Meritocracy is not just limited to skills, Merit comes from the combination of knowledge, skills, abilities, and Attitudes.
#Competency
Competencies are the knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes that contribute to individual and organizational performance.
#CompetencyMapping
Modern management emphasises on the importance of not just competence but competence Mapping ie mapping individual competence to the competence required for the role. This arises from the fact that different roles in an organization require different set of competencies and thus an individual who is best for a specific role need not be the best suited for another job. For example, the job of a research scientist would demand different set of competencies that that required for an Auditor though the fundamental skills ie threshold competencies remain the same.
Competency mapping is the process of identifying and defining the knowledge, skills and personal attributes required for a particular role and mapping the same with the knowledge, skills and personal attributes of the resources assigned and/or to be assigned to that role.
#CompetencyMappingInRamayan
Lord Ram was good in competency mapping as well. Hanuman was his ‘go to person’ for many of his tasks. He preferred Hanuman to be part of the group heading towards the south direction as he was confident that Hanuman was the best suited to find out Sita Mata. But when it came to selecting an emissary to go over to the enemy’s court and discuss the avenues for peace with Ravan before starting the war, he did not give the baton to Hanuman, Instead he gave it to Angad because he knew that Angad was most suitable as an emissary and has better competence than Hanuman as an emissary. When it came to the selection of an architect for building the bridge across the sea, he assigned the responsibility to Nala and his brother Nila and not to Hanuman.
#CompetencyMappingInMahabharath
I mentioned that Duryodhana recognized the skill in Karna and made him a king and roped him to his side. But Bhishma was determined not to allow Karna to fight for the Kauravas under his stewardship in spite of repeated requests from Duryodhana because Bhishma felt that Karna had the skills but not the competence to fight for the Kauravas, Bhishma strongly felt that Karna did not have the right attitudes to top up his skills.
Leadership insights from #ValmikiRamayan shall continue...
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Conceived, compiled and posted by Jaganathan T (www.authorjaganathan.com) as a weekly newsletter of motivational information, #MondayMusings in #Linkedin. Subcribe Monday Musings, Read, Share, Like, Comment, Support positivity and #SpreadPositivity