Mythology Meets Management
Arjuna Saw the Eye. Did He Miss the Forest?
Over the last few months, I’ve been exploring Bengaluru and nearby treks. Almost every hill and temple has a story attached to it. One story leads to another, and before you know it, you’re reliving your childhood.
Like many of us, I grew up admiring Arjuna’s focus.
You know the story.
Drona asks his students to take aim at a bird and asks them one by one,
“What do you see?”
Some say trees.
Some say leaves.
Some see branches.
And Arjuna famously replies,
“I see only the eye of the bird.”
Wonderful lesson, right?
Success demands focus.
And perhaps Drona was absolutely right.
A surgeon needs focus.
A batsman facing a 150 kmph delivery needs focus.
A sniper needs focus.
Distractions are costly.
But over a cup of tea recently, I found myself wondering.
Would I really want my project manager or CEO to answer the same way?
Projects don’t fail because people see too much.
They often fail because people see too little.
Cost optimization kills quality.
Schedule obsession burns teams.
Productivity metrics kill innovation.
Everyone hits their KPI, and yet the project misses the point.
Which made me think.
Arjuna won the contest because he focused on the eye.
But Krishna won the war because he understood the battlefield.
And then another thought crossed my mind.
Imagine Drona asking Krishna the same question.
“What do you see?”
Would Krishna have replied,
“Only the eye of the bird.”
Or would he have said,
“I see the bird, the branch, the wind, the distance, and whether shooting the bird is even necessary.”
Maybe I’m overthinking.
But another question bothers me.
Why did everyone else say they saw trees and branches, but no one mentioned the eye?
Surely, the eye was visible to everyone.
Did they answer differently?
Or was Drona asking the wrong question?
Perhaps Drona wasn’t teaching leadership at all.
He was teaching archery.
And somewhere along the way, we turned a lesson for warriors into a lesson for leaders.
Because leadership is different.
A CEO cannot afford to see only the eye.
A project manager cannot optimize only cost.
A leader has to see stakeholders, risks, teams, customers, and consequences.
Execution may require tunnel vision.
Leadership demands peripheral vision.
So here’s my question over chai.
Was Drona teaching leadership?
Or was he simply teaching how to become a better warrior, while leadership requires a completely different lens?
I don’t have an answer.
But perhaps the question itself is worth asking.
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