Businesses may be built by the balance sheet but great organisations are built on a bigger, more inclusive and less blinkered vision.

There are two types of pragmatism. The first one is a narrow and intense focus on the short-term gains as the bottom-line through technology, methods, and techniques. The other is to lay a wide and patient foundation for long-term effectiveness through vision, values, ideals and above all people. The first is the way of the technocrat and the other is the path of the visionary. Both are needed for success in the corporate world. But for sustainable growth the major emphasis has to be on the second approach.

Vision, ideals and values are verities of the upper layers of the human mind. They are sources of higher motivation and provide a sense of meaning and purpose to life and work. They are not abstractions but energies with an inherent self-effective force. In this issue and the next one we will try to understand the inner sources of these mental forces and how to tap them for enhancing the effectiveness of some of the managerial functions like visioning, motivation and communication.