“Take away my people, but leave my factories, and soon grass will grow on the factory floors. Take away my factories, but leave my people, and soon we will have a new and better factory.”
Andrew Carnegie

Industry in 21st century can rapidly turn their best ideas into new products, services, and market relationships; this was a big drag in the past. With advances in technology over the past decade, the cost of the continuous experimentation needed to test new ideas is at an all-time low, and it continues to decrease. Assisted by advanced computer technologies, rapid and cheap iteration allows managers to substitute experimentation for planning. The challenge is not to test new ideas, but rather to dream up novel ideas worthy of testing. Inventing “the next great thing” defines a business’ success, or if it is invented by competitors, its demise. In contrast to 20th-century business strategies continuously improving existing products and processes is no longer good enough. It is not that enhancements and increased efficiency—including at the level of six sigma—are not important; however, they are not sufficient for economic survival, let alone business success. Global business strategists warn companies not to get caught in the process of “incremental improvements”. By the time an organization has managed to perfect the last 3 percent of the product efficiency cycle. Someone else will have invented a new product. Inventing next—is the key to thriving in the 21st century. Creating the next great thing demands constant innovation; it’s a creative task, not merely an analytical or administrative function. Historically, such activity has been the primary competence of artists, not manager and is fueled by “inspiration”. As we enter the 21st century, organizations’ scarcest resource has become their dreamers and the inspiring leaders, not their testers. There exists an urgent need in industry for evolving different type of leadership for spearheading future growth.

Need for Change:
The structured “reasoning” and thinking based on method of step-by-step automatic perception and pattern matching leads us to “ within the box” solutions to our problems. This methodology up to a certain level may produce results and could further be optimized by concept of motivation-an attempt to cause a specific behavior pattern in people (whom we intend to motivate) that achieves something we want .The “motive” provided is external and may have different attributes depending upon the situation. Whereas 20th-century managerial frameworks focused primarily on motivation, often attempting to identify sets of rewards and punishment that would motivate workers to produce more, 21st-centruy leaders know that such motivation is not enough. The leadership challenge today is to inspire people. When you are inspired, all your thoughts break their bonds, your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction and you find yourself with enormous new energy. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself as entirely different person than you used to be. It is therefore not surprising that British theatre director Richard Olivier uses Shakespeare’s Henry V, and not some arbitrary set of motivation theories, to teach executives about inspirational leadership. Olivier sees Henry V as “Shakespeare’s greatest leader—inspired and inspiring, visionary yet pragmatic, powerful yet responsible”

The Inspiration Gap:
In a survey conducted by an international business magazine, of more than one and a half thousand managers, people were asked what they would most like to see in their leaders. The most popular answer, mentioned by 55% of people, was ‘inspiration’. When asked if they would describe their current leader as ‘inspiring’, only 11% said yes. The two attributes that people actually mentioned most often when describing their current leaders were ‘knowledgeable’ and ‘ambitious.’ There is a huge thirst for inspiring leadership, and there is evidence to support the idea that companies with inspiring leaders perform better.
According to a 6-year (1995–2001) Gallup Poll surveying over 3 million people, 70% are not inspired, the survey may be old but it is more than relevant today , in fact the figure would definitely be much worse now. Gallup found that organizations with higher inspiration levels, on average, performed better, including showing a 56% higher customer loyalty rate, 44% higher employee retention, 50% higher productivity, 33% higher profitability, and 50% higher safety rate (as reported by the Bennett Performance Group)(1)
The stereotype of the inspirational leader as someone extrovert and charismatic
is the exception rather than the rule. Looking across the board in
business and society, though some inspirational leaders certainly do fit this mould, a large number do not. Most of them are quiet, unassuming, humble and almost introverted. Jim Collins in his book “Good to Great” (Stanford University) after comparing “Good Companies to Great (G) Companies” has commented:
Quote “type of leadership required for turning a good company into a great company came as biggest surprise. Compared to high-profile leaders with big personalities who make headlines, the G-leaders were self effacing, quiet, reserved, shy-with a paradox blend of humility and professional will” Unquote- truly “Inspired “ones
Motivation and inspiration:
What were the reasons, which caused such a mass uprising of followers with passion and dedication to the vision of Gandhi? We never heard Gandhi saying that he had a Strategic plan or for that matter of fact Mother Teresa saying about a Quality plan for slum children. There is endless list of such inspired leaders. They did not need any plan; they were inspired leaders and created inspired followers. When we unravel the mysteries of their powerful style of leadership, we find inspiration is at the core of every great leader’s philosophy.
Management guru Peter Drucker counseled business leaders to learn about inspiration from voluntary-sector organizations, categorically stating, “Unless people would volunteer to work with you and your organization, you are not truly a leader.” Ask yourself: “Why would anyone choose to work for your organization if you didn’t pay them? Why would anyone choose to work for you?”

Motivation and inspiration are two different concepts. Motivation is external whereas inspiration comes from within. Motivation, at its best, is an attempt to serve others in our best interests. Inspiration is a call of one’s consciousness and enthuses the person with enormous inner energy which in turn infuses the followers and other associates with amazing effects. Organization can not inspire –it is simply an entity .It is the people who are inspired and organization with inspired people is an inspired organization.
Leaders often fail to understand a simple fact of human nature: people are basically motivated beings. They come to work for two reasons: to earn the economic means to support themselves and their family and to make a difference. One of the primary bases of inspiration in the organization is employees’ need to make an impact, for each person to know that his or her work is a part of a more important higher goal. They seek to understand how and why they are making a difference in the workplace. Motivating others is an outside-in approach to leadership that is not sustainable over time because people don’t need motivation. They need inspiration. Inspiring people is an inside-out approach to leadership that is entirely self-sustaining, as people strive to reach their fullest potential.

What and how to do:

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
The mind is everything. What we think, we become.
~~~ Buddha

How to be inspired and what creates inspired leadership?? Yes, it is possible; you have to only look inwards and realize your true self. Once you are awakened and get in touch with your true nature, then nothing is beyond your means - you are truly empowered. And THAT is an accurate definition of YOU! (2)

As Swami Vivekananda has said:
“Arise, Awake! Awake from this hypnotism of weakness. None is really weak; the soul is infinite, omnipotent, and omniscient. Stand up, assert yourself, proclaim the God within you . . . Teach yourselves, teach everyone, his real nature. Call upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes. Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will come, and everything that is excellent will come, when this sleeping soul is roused to self-conscious activity”.

Inner Transformation for awaking self:
Everything that a person does originates from his/her mind. The view that he/she holds, and the underlying beliefs and paradigms from which he/she operates affects the person’s thoughts, words and actions. His/ her effectiveness is a direct function of the kind of consciousness, which underlies the person’s work and life. If you care for your mind, if you nurture it and cultivate it just like a fertile garden, it will blossom far beyond your expectation. Now, look at the toxic waste that most people put into fertile garden of their mind every single day the worries and the anxieties, the fretting about the past, the brooding over future and those self-created fears and most of all the EGO that wreak havoc with your inner world and stop you from being your real self. The infinite creative and positive power that is naturally present in each and every one of us by virtue of our own consciousness can be rendered ineffective if not tended to properly. The stress of our lifestyle, the pollution of our environment, and the collective stress of our world keeps us from functioning at our full potential.
We can think of a leader as having infinite potential, which has got temporarily covered by his wrong notions, attitudes and other “garbage” accumulated over a period of time. The mind being so covered and full of clutter, the leader operates in a constrained way, this not being his real self. When the legacy “garbage” is removed leader functions freely and is an inspiring force for positive change. Inner Transformation is simply the process of shedding our “garbage” which includes illusions, limiting beliefs, negative thoughts and lack of ideas, and operate from the glory and abundance of the real Self. It is awakening to our Essence, which is always there, but which we are not conscious of and then operating from this unbounded space- which is the fountainhead of inspiration.
Conclusions:
The more leaders expand their understanding and consciousness, through Inner Transformation, the more they will become instruments of life’s positive forces, which would lead them to unbounded inspiration not only for themselves but also for the people associated with them.
It would also be interesting to explore the possibilities of adopting our own ancient spiritual practices for ushering “Inner Transformation” in people.
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References:

(1) http://www.bennettperformancegroup.com/
(2) “Embedded Software in Human beings and how to debug it”: Koshal Dhar –Under publication 2009
About the Author:

Mr. Dhar had initial education from Kashmir University. B.Tech and M.Tech from Calcutta University in Advanced Electronics and Communication. Worked in CSIR, Public Sector and MNCs at various levels. Was involved in appropriate Technology Transfers with specific relevance to national needs. Extensively traveled throughout the world as member of various official delegations. Currently working as free lance consultant and trying to analyze the forces which help in developing and optimizing latent potential of human beings. Mr. Dhar can be reached at: koshal.k@gmail.com.
This is the first in the series of articles written by author on Leadership Requirements in knowledge based economies.