Rose Mary

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.
Luke 9:23

In an interview recorded in Harvard Business Review in 2011 on the eve of his retirement, N R Narayana Murthy, Chairman and Chief Mentor of Infosys Technologies Ltd, tells the inspiring story of the growth and development of his great company. Way back in 1981 the seven co-founders agreed that the vision of the company would be “to be India’s most respected company.” From then on, the hardest part was to preserve the values they had committed to right from the beginning. In an environment where businesses thrived on pay-offs and bribery, the task of creating value for the company in terms of competitive advantage was an uphill one, to say the least. They had to take on financial liabilities and often give up opportunities that proved unviable because they refused to tread an unethical path. At the end, the strength of their commitment to honesty and transparency won the day, and Infosys is now a global leader in technology and consulting. This, in a nutshell, is the story of a business leader who boldly rode against the tide and bore the consequences of his conscious decision to stand by moral and ethical values. In his own words “Making money wasn’t essential; earning respect was.”

Walking the talk is not confined to the context of business and leadership. It is an essential aspect of each one’s personal credibility. Each of us is called upon to play out many roles at the same time, and each role – parent, son, friend, employer or employee—has their own challenges when it comes to supporting our high ideals with actions that speak the same language. Take for example the common sight of the number of Catholics who strictly cling to the tradition of coming for Mass on Sundays with the entire family, but prefer to remain outside the Church through the entire service. Adhering to a norm without supporting it with meaningful action does not serve any purpose to oneself or to those whom one wishes to influence.

Within a family, parents try their best to inculcate good values in their children. They teach them to be honest and generous and hardworking. Unfortunately, children learn little from what they are told. Rather, they imbibe their patterns of behaviour from what they see and experience. When Mathew cut off all relations with his brother on the issue of a property dispute, his sons understood one thing clearly— when it comes to material possessions, your relationship with your closest family members becomes secondary and unimportant, something that can be dispensed with permanently. Living in a joint family, Mary cleverly found ways to avoid taking on a fair share of the household chores. Her daughter slowly but surely learnt some ‘smart’ life lessons. Wherever possible, make your life as comfortable as possible even at the cost of exploiting others in the bargain.

On the professional front, we often have to face a variety of issues that calls our ethical codes to question. A smart young student I had taught a few years back, came to campus to visit us. He told us how he had landed his dream job in a multi-national bank but had given it up in a year’s time. His first assignment, after the initial training period, was to recover the EMIs for loans taken by people earning below Rs 5000/- per month. The methods adopted were ruthless and he decided he could not make his living by inflicting suffering and misery on those who were already burdened with poverty and hardship. The decision to resign was a tough one and it took him a while to get another job, but he was prepared to pay the price for standing by what he believed was right.

As followers of Christ we are all the more bound to see that our actions are in line with the values we claim to live by. No one can easily forget the bible passage where Jesus lashes out against the hypocrisy of the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees-Mathew 23. Cursing the whole brood of dishonest hypocrites, He promises the harshest punishment to those who pretend to be righteous and correct but are completely without any sense of justice and mercy. He describes them as ‘whitewashed tombs which look fine on the outside but are full of bones and decaying corpses on the inside.’

The path that we tread when we make a sincere attempt to live by our Christian principles is rough and narrow. But it leads us to the destination that the Lord has prepared for us. And it also acts as a beacon that leads others in the direction of this final terminus.