Bonding in Businesses Busts Barriers & Brings in Battle Badges

Building Bonds is the Sine-Qua-Non to Raise Any Organisation’s Might

Business managements have adopted several military concepts like strategy, tactics, and campaigns. This has helped managers to conquer new markets and make dramatic progress.

However, it is a pity that the dynamic and vigorous action-packed concepts of battles and wars have not been given full emphasis. The victories in these depend on the qualities like bonding, cohesion, collective actions, solid determination, unflinching courage, spirit of supreme sacrifice, discipline, etc. Businesses focus on competition instead of wars and battles. Competition is a common concept for many activities and lacks the fervour and excitement of war.

Business competition is in effect commercial warfare. It is evident from the phenomenal success of the podcasts series and the book titled “The Art of Business Wars” by David Brown, based on Chinese strategist (500 BC) Sun-Tzu’s book ‘The Art of War’. 

The current reality in the business world supports the ‘commercial wars’ idea. These facts are proof: (i) the average age of the Fortune 500 companies is reported to have been reduced from 60 to 15 years in the last 50 years (ii)  it is forecast by experts that 75% of the existing companies in the current Fortune 500 list are likely to be replaced by new ones in the next 5 years (iii) over 92% of start-ups fail in 3 years (iv) the turmoil in the financial world with bank bankruptcies and spiraling insolvencies tantamount to ‘war wreckages’. 

Bonding: Core Concept in Militaries

And, we all know that the decisive factor in warfare is the esprit-de-corps or the bonding of soldiers/employees. Bonding is a very core concept in the military. Their credo includes the words: “It is the spirit……..imbibed in every officer that binds him with his men in an unshakeable bond of camaraderie”.

It should be also the core concept in companies. In fact, the Latin roots of the word ‘company’ are ‘com’ meaning ‘together’ and ‘panis’ meaning ‘bread’, i.e. company people are friends/ companions who break bread together indicating intimacy or bonding.

A few companies have a good record of bonding between employees. But the overall scenario is deplorable. This is obvious from the stories about ‘resignation wave’, ‘employee unrest’, ‘massive retrenchment', ‘loyalty loss’, ‘low employee engagement’. All these cost trillions of dollars.

It is  an all-round feeling that the new tools and techniques and not humans  are considered as  the marks of the corporate world’s  glory.  Also the dramatic impact of AI, ChatGPT and other new technology have created a scare about further massive job losses.

Bonding is a far cry in such situations. Thus, there is an urgent need for a strategy to purposefully  inculcate the spirit of human dignity and bonding to sustain the march towards a cherished enchanting future.

Humane Spirit, Bonding & Camaraderie : the Master Keys to Success

This because the basic fact remains that ultimately humans decide business success as machines cannot have the intuitive way of decision making, innovativeness and communication abilities. The top secret of business success is bonding which is mainly based on effective communication. 

The renowned communications expert, Dr. Albert Mehrabian, says that only 7% of meaning is conveyed through verbal communication and as much as 93% is conveyed through non-verbal ways - 38% through tone of voice and 55% through body language. And, moreover, add to these obstacles the varying pronunciations, multiple languages, and dialects that you find in a globalized business environment

Can there be an AI-machine that can master such a complex communication process and accomplish meaningful progress? 

The communication process is further complicated by the contention of the schools of thought that believe human behaviour is basically guided by the shadripus or six enemies – the forces of lust, anger, pride, greed, attachment and jealousy - or by the seven sins - pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. In spite of preaching by thousands of saints and teachers, individuals and teams suffer due to these enemies of the mind. What the saints could not achieve fully is definitely beyond the capability of AI and other digital tools.

Also one more factor of critical importance: the ‘unshakable bonds of comradery’ can only be built when families of all stakeholders are also interconnected through intimate relationships. This ensures ‘work-life’ balance, what Gen-Z is reported to value the most.

The turmoil caused by the unimagined fast-changing, interactive ‘socio-eco-techno’ environment has made bonding both urgent and difficult. There is an urgent need to include in relationships sharing of knowledge and experiences. In fact, the very definition of education: “The acquisition of knowledge and capacity to add to it” makes this mandatory.

Well, as the story below shows the bonding, in fact, comes naturally to ‘humane’ folks. With apologies, we wish to state that all above processes are for those who have yet to transform themselves from mere humans to ‘humane’ state. The conversion is the toughest task as can be imagined from Plato’s words - “When we restrain or control ourselves, a rational being restrains an animal. In this view, each of us is both a beast and a person. And, the point of human life is to constrain our desires with rationality and purify ourselves of animality”.

The above observation that bonding is a natural human tendency for some might appear far-fetched. But there is a proof. An informal talk on this topic with an eminent ex-CEO of a flourishing company with record financial results, high reputation and several awards to its credit was eye-opener. For him the bonding through all-round dialogues and ‘growing together hand-in hand’ is ‘natural’ in all ‘humane’ leaders. He cited an incident which epitomizes and simplifies the bonding process.

He had gone to attend the wedding reception of a daughter of the company’s General Manager - Marketing. When he greeted the couple and handed over the gift, the girl spontaneously told the groom in Marathi “yanni amchya babanna ghadvila”, which literally means ‘he moulded my  father’. The officer explained that the  term moulding is insulting to basically creative humans; humans grow.  What the girl’s remark really meant was that ‘he helped my father to grow to higher positions’.

Why was the girl so overwhelmed? The girl’s father, a high school graduate initially was the CEO’s secretary. But the CEO noticed that he was a quick learner with wider interests, excellent relationships with people around and a methodical way of handling matters far beyond his responsibilities. So, he gave his assistant additional responsibilities of sales administration, asked him to do a course and then promoted him as Regional  Marketing Manager and then later to General Manager. All along the CEO coached and mentored this colleague. That process of rising in his career was epitomized by the bride’s word ‘ghadawile’. 

The CEO also explained with pride that he has similar bonds with other employees and their families will tell similar stories. He had created a congenial social environment for spontaneous all-round bonding. They have a Social Club, Ladies Council, many sports teams, art circles, scholarships, group tours, company websites and above all the annual grand event of the Foundation Day attended by all employees and families.

A question may arise: “How can this be done by global giants having thousands of employees?”. Well, just by delegating powers and resources to the heads of local units’ and coordinating through video conferencing as well as promoting local and international exchange programmes.

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