By Vishwanath Alluri with Harry Eyres, published by HarperCollins
Can a manager also be enlightened? At first, the idea seems contradictory. A manager deals with goals, deadlines, and outcomes; an enlightened person is supposed to see all things with equanimity. Yet it is exactly this paradox that Vishwanath Alluri and Harry Eyres take up in The Enlightened Manager.
This is not a book of easy frameworks, formulas, or management mantras. It does not give quick fixes to the problems of work and life. Instead, it unsettles, provokes, and holds up a mirror. It makes us question our assumptions about leadership, success, and even the way we live.
A book of questions, not answers
From its very first chapter, Language, the book challenges the status quo. It asks: are the words and ideas we live by reliable guides, or are they the very sources of confusion? As the author points out, only the right questions can set us in the right direction.
The inquiry unfolds in the form of conversations. HC and his friend GP speak, argue, and reflect, with Panna, a farmer-philosopher, joining in as a recurring presence. Overseeing them, sometimes gently, firmly, is the ‘Friend on the Bench’ – whose remarks strip away illusions and return us to simplicity.
‘The way we live creates its own problems, and we live trying to solve the problems. Live simply, stripped of all stupidities, in that beautiful and ecstatic sense.’ That is the kind of direct, unsettling wisdom scattered through the pages.
Stories that stay with you
Among the most memorable passages is the story of Panna teaching farming. He refuses to ‘teach’ in the academic sense; instead, he insists that the student must live with him through at least two crops. Only then will he acquire ‘the feel’ – a sensitivity to cattle, soil, and seasons that no classroom can offer.
Equally striking is the chapter on Roger Federer. Entrepreneurs, Alluri observes, often obsess over outcomes. Federer, however, embodies the opposite: total absorption in the process of each stroke, with no attachment to where the ball lands. The lesson: awareness of outcome is necessary, but obsession with it is destructive.
Beyond management, into life
The book’s central argument is that management is inseparable from life. Systems and processes have their place, but without clarity of mind, they can trap us in mechanical routines. True leadership begins not in structures but in self-awareness – in understanding how the mind itself functions.
This approach will feel familiar to readers of Jiddu Krishnamurti. Like JK, Alluri does not preach from authority. He questions, invites, and leaves the responsibility with the reader. The style is conversational, yet the impact is philosophical.
The book resists easy classification as ‘self-help’ or ‘management theory’. It is, instead, a reflective companion – the kind of book one returns to, not to extract tips, but to revisit questions.
The Enlightened Manager is not to be rushed through. It is to be read slowly, perhaps more than once. I had to. It makes us reconsider what leadership is, and whether clarity, compassion, and awareness can coexist with ambition and targets. For anyone open to rethinking management as an art of living, this is it. — P Nagarjuna Rao
