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MBAUniverse.com: Find your 'purpose' for lasting happiness: Prof Srikumar Rao

Inverview Srikumar Rao
June 02, 2010
URL: http://www.mbauniverse.com/article/id/3284/Srikumar_Rao_Happiness_At_Work

MBAUniverse.com brings to you an exclusive interview with Prof. Srikumar Rao where he talks about his new book and current state of MBA education. Prof. Srikumar Rao says that we can learn to create joy no matter what else may be going on around us.

In these tough times, there are few people who are completely happy with their present condition. From business executives to the everyday Ram or Shyam, everyone seems to be going through a rough economic and personal crunch. Acclaimed business school professor and renowned author Prof. Srikumar Rao says that we can learn to create joy no matter what else may be going on around us. His latest book ‘Happiness at Work: Be Resilient, Motivated and Successful – No Matter What’, published by McGraw-Hill (2010), talks in detail on how one can be happy in situations which they perceive as unhappy.

MBAUniverse.com brings to you an exclusive interview with Prof. Srikumar Rao where he talks about his new book and current state of MBA education.

Prof. Rao is currently an adjunct professor at London Business School and the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in Marketing from the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University and his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. His undergraduate training was in Physics at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University.

Prof. Rao is also the author of the books: ‘Are You Ready to Succeed: Unconventional Strategies for Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and Life’, Hyperion (2006) and ‘The Personal Mastery Program’, Sounds True (2007).

Read the excerpts from the interview:

Q: Your latest book titled ‘Happiness at Work’ offers advice on being happy in any situation. What is the secret to happiness in a world that is full of stress, mistrust and sky-high ambitions?

A: We don't recognize that the ‘reality’ we are experiencing is a construct, not a given. It did not ‘happen’ to us, we ‘co-created’ it. If we don't like any aspect of it, we can deconstruct it and build it again. This is a lifelong process. Once you master it, you can literally banish stress from your life.

Q: Your earlier book ‘Are you Ready to Succeed’ (AYRTS) was a guide to personal transformation in work and life. How is the message of the new book different from the earlier one? Does ‘Happiness at Work’ take off from where ‘Are you Ready to Succeed’ left?

A: Some of the material is the same but presented in a different fashion. There are many more practical tips on how to use the concepts I teach. In some areas I go much deeper than in AYRTS.

Q: How can one be happy while putting in a 12 hour work-day, and shouldering various social and family demands? Is the current corporate work structure too much to handle?

A: The question itself reveals erroneous thinking. It implies that our happiness depends on external factors. These factors do affect our well-being but far more than they need to because we have not learned how to govern our inner lives. Stuff will always happen to us as long as we are in the human predicament. We can learn to grow through all experience rather than be laid low by them.

Q: Let’s talk about your very popular MBA course ‘Creativity & Personal Mastery’? What is the need for such a course? How was it started? And what does it aim to do for its participants?

A: It began at Long Island University in 1994 and moved to Columbia Business School in 1999. I have since taught it at many top business schools including Kellogg, Berkeley and London Business School. It helps participants transform their lives so that they are able to experience more joy and fulfillment in every aspect of it - professional and personal.

Q: MBA programs have been facing a lot of criticism, especially in the West, for all the financial sector mess. Critics and media argue that MBA programs teach too much of ‘profit’ and ‘top-line’, ignoring customer and society’s larger interest. The recent book ‘Rethinking MBA’ by Harvard’s Dr Srikant M Datar and others has talked extensively of the crisis. How do you look at this debate? What’s your view? How should MBA programs be improved for future?

A: I think that the critics have a valid point. Too many of our top business schools are not really educational institutions. They are indoctrination institutions. We need to have many more courses that are deeply reflective, that get participants to think deeply about their values, their role in society and how they intend to fulfill that role.

Q: Finally, what is your advice to young MBA students who are at the thresholds of their corporate career? How should they think about work, and plan their career? Most of them are perhaps too enamored with pay-packets, designations and perks?

A: Discover the beat of your drum and march to that beat. There is nothing ‘wrong’ at all in going for the big paycheck or the perks, but these are no substitute for meaning of your life or a sense of purpose. If you do not develop this, you will lead a jejune existence and that would be a shame.

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