From the archives - Innate message of TQM - MOVE Nov 04.

MOVE Series(archives) contd.... Nov 04. "innate message of TQM".

"One is possibly aware of the famous riddle of the two horsemen and the king. The riddle goes somewhat like this ; two very good horsemen request the king to judge as to who is the better one, amongst them. The king quite quixoticlly, asks them to a race and says that the fellow whose horse comes in last would be the winner. What happens next is predictable. Neither of them would even stir, till a wise man sees them, and whispers a few words. Immediately thereafter both of them are seen galloping towards their destination. The riddle? What did the wise man tell them, and the answer; "change the horses". This on the face of it is an interesting juvenile riddle( I heard it when I was a 12 year old & was hugely disappointed when I could not solve it but thrilled/excited to the same degree when I heard the answer!!). Today however this offers me, a totally new and a profound meaning.

Imagine the king to represent the "leadership" in either the Govt or the corporate or the spiritual world. The wise man the liaison agent/consultant/priest respectively, and the main protogonists(the horsemen) you and me. The liaison man and the consultant, act as guides to work thru the rules & emerge winners; the priest will probably tell us that we have no other option but to follow the command (probably after doing this for sometime, we may start blaming our "karma"). A very select evolved set of people, may however tell us, that the winning of this contest is not an end in itself. In other words, therefore, there are times, when one can exercise option of politely ignoring the suggestions/ start a dialogue without the fear of a reprimand. As to the king in the story, he would have dismissed the horsemen as morons.

This is where the TQM philosophy offers one an immense help. It endorses a similar view, namely that awards are merely milestones in one's process of perpetual evolutuion in pursuit of excellence ( excellence is not an act but a habit said Aristotle).

To stretch it further, TQM can be compared to, a spiritual path to "self-realization". One only needs to precisely define one's role profile, to be able to pursue this ideal. To get obsessed with mere tools such as PDCAs etc, quite oblivious to the philosophy behind the concept as such, is almost akin to using a main-frame computer to type one's letters!!

In the famous "bhagawad Gita" the lord asks Arjuna to totally surrender to Him and He would rid him of all his sins. One of the deeper meaning of this original samskrit version, is that when one rids one's mind of any thought other than the Lord Himself, & performs his duties, no wrong doing will ever attach itself with any of his deeds. And so with TQM in my humble opinion. With the mind purely engaged in, the only thought of TQM, one's actions are unlikely to go wrong.

Do we have the stature for such a noble pursuit? Or can we at least aspire to qualify?

Worth pondering over surely........"


PS dt 7th Oct 09. The horsemen story and a different intrepretation was a theme in the children series piece, in the blog. So much exploring , and pondering over, for the past over 5 years of writing this piece, notwithstanding these I am still unable to dispel scepticisms/doubts that come in a horde like locusts. Corporates continue to pursue TQM primarily for recognitions, medals, with the main objective of achieving better suceess in the market place, the priestly class/the gurus have the leitmotif to pursue their marketing of nirvana to all, and the majority of the "aam aadmi" is mesmerised by the beauty of these nicely packaged "learn how kits". But the really genuine seeker of peace seems to miss out totally...... Am I just being paranoid?

Love

Vichu