It was early evening
My fitness watch stopped asking me every five minutes if I am walking outdoor or indoor as it stopped believing that somebody would be walking for six hours at a stretch, neither it was a priority for me to answer a watch than taking care of sea of humanity that never seemed to stop arriving relentlessly at the place I am working.
Yes, it was a hard day’s work at Isha yoga centre Coimbatore Tamilnadu India. Being a volunteer I prefer to work at times. Working at public places in a completely different role always gives me a different perspective of life that is quite different from the one we see while passing through the tunnel called corporate life.
A long weekend where i had to work in different places doing different types of jobs gave a chance of uninterrupted observation of how human beings behave and how behavior can be influenced by various factors.
We see people thronging public spaces, be it religious places or secular places. While they are supposed to be more disciplined while visiting the religious places, we seldom find such instances. Majority of the temples we witness people becoming pushy, unruly or even resort to rude behavior to ensure that they complete the ritual of having a glimpse of the deity as soon as possible. It leaves the temple staff to be on their toes all the time and raising their internal mercury to heights of anger and exhaustion.
But to my astonishment, I very rarely witness such type of behavior while working at Isha. I am neither trying to promote Isha Youga centre nor going to attribute this to any super natural element that is responsible for a better behavior of people visiting in large numbers.
When you pour water into a glass, it naturally assumes the shape of a glass. If you fill a jar, water makes no complaint but adjusts to the contours of the jar.
People are no different from the water.
The glass or a jar in the above example can be called “CULTURE”.
When it comes to this simple example of visiting a place, Culture can be physical environment, people who are working at that place, regular visitors who are part of the overall crowd, processes adopted and the overall genuine impact created by all the above.
Careful observation reveals that someone who walks into Isha comes with the similar expectations of any other regular religious place. His/her behavior at parking place will be common like one may find in any other place.
He finds the first difference in how the locker room volunteers handle his urgency or arrogance. While walking along a half a kilometer path he/she will be interacting with different volunteers helping him patiently. It brings a gradual change in his behavior and he/she will be slowing down a little to understand and absorb what is happening around. When people enter finally the sanctum sanctorum, they no more will be the same.
Here comes my most important learning applying this to a corporate. Every company recruits employees. They may be of different in every possible way one can imagine. But when they enter the organization, it is the CULTURE of the organization that needs to embrace and make the people to understand how their differences can unite and create a beautiful orchestra of performance without compromising the essential values the company works for.
Water never lost its individuality but was ready to adopt to adapt to the shape of the vessel. Similarly, culture in an organization makes people to understand where they are and what makes them an organization.
Coming back to a fist time visitor to Isha example, a new employee too understands the culture of the organization by looking at existing employees, actual processes, what management does and even physical environment at the office space.
Culture is neither a positive nor a negative word. Complete chaos also constitute culture, the same way fully organized set up.
And one more most important element in creating a positive culture is to sustain the same. Frequent changes in policy, process, behavior will only bring confusion that sets a different type of culture in an organization.
