Now we are in the final phase of Ramayana, here we will be introduced to the brightest side of Ram. Every move of Ram in this Kand of Ramayana was planned and calculated one. He has had planned all of this to the very detail. I will try to explore each and every move from Project management perspective. Let us take a look at the incidents happening in this Kand.
As suggested by Samundar, Nal and Neel had been assigned as Architect for this activity. Let me try to explain every interesting fact here. Ram knew the capability of Nal and Neel he could have appointed them as Architects himself, but he did so only after a recommendation from Samundar.
This applies to real-world as well, If you are appointing anyone after recommendation from some very powerful and superior personality, the appointed person himself feels accountable for his actions. And we are questioning about the construction of the bridge on Samundar, and if Samundar is recommending them, rest assure that the appointed person will do all that was possible to prove their worth and that the recommendation was apt.
So, Ram planned wisely and got the recommendation from Samundar dev for appointing Nal and Neel as the Architect’s for the bridge and on the other hand, this gives assurance that Samundar is also going to support and contribute. This is called a wise decision in such a situation.
Now all Vanar sena, and every living creature on that coast by the sea lend a hand to help Nal and Neel for construction of the Bridge.
Once Setu was finished, Ram Sena started marching towards Lanka, and they safely crossed the bridge and reached Lanka as planned.
Story moves forward and Now Ram and his Sena are in Lanka. They set up their camp outside of Lanka with the help of the great war experts in his sena.
In the evening Ram decided to have a look of his setup and scan Lanka, with the help of Vibhishana they reached to the top of a hill near Lanka from where they had a clear and wide view of their setup and Lanka.
Here is another point to be noticed, when you have all the setup ready, and you are about to launch the final execution you have to revisit all your resource and see they are placed at right place. Ram did the exact same here, he scanned his and Raavana setup and resources.
Ram acted out yet another smart move at this point. He wanted to convey the message to Raavana that he has arrived in Lanka, although this message already reached Raavana through his own resources. Ram wanted to come forward and formally declared his arrival, He fires an arrow toward Ravana where he was busy enjoying the luxury with his wife,
The arrow cut through the earring of Mandodari and Mukut of Raavana with a single arrow. By doing this Ram conveyed the message to Raavana that he should not underestimate the power and he still has a chance to surrender. Ram knew that Raavana is not going to surrender and to be fair he was not looking for a surrender because his main aim was to kill him.
To make sure that Raavana acted out as per Ram plan he has already placed Mandodari, Nana ji of Raavana, who kept on demotivating him day by day and making him more and more furious, they did all effort to ensure that Raavana should not fight against Ram and Surrender.
By showing his utter presence and demonstrating a glimpse of his power, Ram was demoralizing Raavana and crushing his confidence. So, he acted. By cutting Mandodari earring and Raavana Mukut with a single arrow he accomplished two main aims from this simple act.
One he demoralized Raavana and his Sena and on the other hand this act has boosted the confidence of Ram Sena and ensured them that the victory will be theirs.
Ram demoralized Raavana and by doing so, Half the battle was already won.
Ram again applied his management skills and suggested to send yet another messenger to Raavana. The purpose again was to lower his confidence and show his power to the Raavana sena.
As Hanuman has already had taught a lesson to Raavana, this time another resource should be sent to deliver the message that we have a lot of powerful men and of similar capacity resource here in this Sena.
They collectively decided to send Angad this time based on the suggestion of his officials. Even Ram wanted to send Angad as the messenger. Let me try to list down the reason behind this choice.
- Angad was very powerful and intelligent similar to Hanuman.
- He was Yuvraj of Kishkindha and if a person with such a high designation was sent as a messenger another party would be bound to listen to him.
The smartest move which I like here is.
By sending Angad what Ram did is termed as SWOT analysis and here he tried to explore the weakness Angad may have,
As Ram has killed his father and he may be having some obvious and questionable motives or feelings for Ram which is natural for anyone whose father has been killed by the very man you are working with. There is a chance that Angad may be looking for an opportunity to harm Ram take revenge of his father’s execution.
Another reason of doubt was that Angad Father Bali and Raavana has friendship pact between them and Angad was the witness of that pact.
By considering all these points and reasons Ram sent Angad as a messenger to Raavana. As if it would happen that Angad has some ill thinking for Ram he would change the project and will join Raavana when he sees the benefit of Power of Raavana army, and he would help him execute his plan. If this is true, Ram will get one of the enemies identified form his army before beginning.
The same principle applies for any plan execution you have to identify the person who can act against your plan and then get rid of that person and adjust your plan accordingly.
Here Angad passed the examination, and he proved his loyalty with Ram. Now ram has the assurance of loyalty to every individual of his army personal.
Angad has also shown his smartness in Raavana Darbar and showed that Ram sena has many warriors similar to Hanuman and they are in for the win.
Now coming to the climax of the project, let’s try and understand the beauty of Ram’s skills in executing the final part of the project with a perfect closure.
When Angad returned to Ram after proving he was a true devotee of Ram and will be honest all along the Yudh and beyond. Ram gained the confidence that all the resources he had on his team were truly devoted to the duty assigned to them and were a devotee to their Lord Shree Ram.
Ram decided to make all of them accountable for their act. He divided the entire army into four group and elected a leader for each group based on the resource in team and quality the elected leader possessed.
It was time to step into war ground.
Hanuman was assigned to break the South door of Lanka which was being guarded by Raavana’s most powerful son Meghnath. Here Hanuman and Meghnath had a toe-to-toe fight which eventually resulted in Hanuman overpowering him and leaving him wounded.
Meghnath’s Rath Sarthi proved to be a very smart one who could make sudden decision in case of trauma, when he noticed Meghnath losing the battle and ending up wounded, he turned back the Rath and made sure Meghnath reached Lanka in time for the treatment of his wounds.
When Angad found out that Hanuman Ji is fighting in a battle alone he joined Him without a second thought and made sure his team accompanied Hanuman and with the new ally they pervaded the south gate of Lanka and provoked the war by demolishing Raavana Mahal.
Notice the accountability in this act.
Hanuman and Angad were assigned to the same target and were given full freedom to make a decision of their own in the hour of action, they took the accountability and made the right decision by joining their teams and completing the task assigned to them.
This was yet another setback for Raavana. After having a glimpse of what they had to face, Raavana’s army men were demotivated and once again, got another step close to losing the battle they haven’t even fought yet.
A very minute yet a very important resource was doing the job from the opposite team to get Ram one step closer to winning the battle, and this unnoticed resource were the Rani’s of Raavana, who kept on blaming him for all the misshaping's and suggesting him time after time to surrender. These words proved to be a very loud one and broke Ravana’s confidence piece by piece and lowering his chance to win the battle.
As it’s been said continuous demotivation would lead you to lose the war before even stepping in the battleground.
The Vanar sena were proving to be heavy on the enemy’s army as the moments passed by and on the other end, Vibhishan was helping ram by identifying the leaders of the respective teams as the Vanar sena were slaying them one by one.
After looking at the current scenario in the battlefield it was clear that Raavana’s army was at the losing end, when this became obvious to Aakampan and Atikaya (Leaders of Raavana sena) they turned to their evil side and put into play their tactics using yet another cunning and confusing illusion which made the daytime turn into night confusing the warriors of ram sena.
Ram was prepared for all possible tactics that the enemy’s army could have pulled off and was prepared to face this one too, all prepared with his Agni bana, and vanished the illusion effective immediately.
The next day that followed, Raavan sent his dearest son Meghnath into the battlefield for leading the war, he put up a very challenging fight with Laxmanan and used his weapon named Sakti bana that ended up hurting Laxmanan and leaving him unconscious.
All these incidents when added up may seem like any other ordinary story but when we look at them with a new perspective, they all emerge as a lesson that was left unnoticed.
Ram was aware of the powers that Meghnath possessed, but still he agreed to allow laxmana to face Meghnath all alone after he insisted to do so? What could be the possible reason behind it? Let us try and analyze:
- To let Laxman realize his mistake of assuming Meghnath as an easy candidate for a battle.
- The end of the war was nowhere to be seen and Ram was saving all of himself for the final battle with Raavana, and for the moment he had to risk it all and send Laxman in for the battle (Being a leader you have to take harsh decisions at time).
- Ram knew that Hanuman had a vital role to play for the final execution of the project, and had something happened to Ram, hanuman would have become a slave to his emotion and might end up losing the sanity to be a warrior in a battle.
- In the later acts, Hanuman was sent to bring the Vaidya Sushen who further asked for the Sanjeevani Booty from the Himalaya
The incident where Hanuman was sent to bring the Sanjeevani was a very clever demonstration of accountability displayed by the army of ram (in this case ‘Hanuman’). Hanuman was aware that if he failed to bring back Sanjeevani on time, it could cost the life of Laxamana. When he finally reached Himalaya, he was unable to identify Sanjeevani, and this made him to act immediately and intelligently to with a solution, and hence forcing him to pick up the whole mountain and fly back to Ram. This is an excellent example of accountability displayed and Out of the box thinking.
On his way to get Sanjeevani another incident comes to light, about Kalanemi.
Kalanemi was a powerful warrior and Tantra Gyani who served Raavana. To stop Hanuman from completing his task and to hinder the recovery of Laxmanan, he created an illusion of an Ashram, River, greenery and tried to woo Hanuman to rest for a while. After a few moments of conversation, Hanuman captured a hint of the illusion and was able to get over it by killing Kalanemi and proceeding with his task.
Yet another hidden lesson is to be learned here, “Do not get influenced by illusion even if they seem to be a convincing one, have your doubts.”, a beautiful Aashram, River, Greenery between the snow-covered mountains?? It was all about keeping your eyes open and processing everything that was happening and using your common sense.
Do not get distracted by something that may be soothing to your eyes, stay put with your goals.
Hanuman completed the task successfully and Laxman recovered in no time and was back on the battlefield.
The following day, Raavan sent his younger brother, Kumbh-Karan into the war ground. Kumbhakaran was known to be one of the wisest and the most powerful warrior of Raavana’s army. His powers dominated the Vanar sena, and Ram had to step in to fight against him all by himself.
Ram noticed that Kumbhakaran was using his hands a a major weapon for destroying the Vanar sena, so he acted immediately, did a Root Cause Analysis and fired a Bana that resulted in decapitating of Kumbh-Karan’s Arms. This practice is termed as uprooting the issue.
This resulted in the death of Kumbhakaran.
Moving on to the next step taken by Raavan to be back in the war with a winning attitude, Meghnath comes back into play, he performs a Yagya that would ultimately make him impossible to defeat. Vibhishan was aware of the Yagya and the consequences it would have, so he informed Ram about the same and Ram acted upon it by putting Laxman to play and destroy the Yagya that was taking place.
Ram made sure that the opposition would not gain any more power that would hinder their completion of project and so he acted smartly.
Eventually, Meghnath was killed by Lakshman.
The war was moving forward every moment, and the most crucial part of the war one was yet to be started, the battle that was to be fought with Raavana.
Raavana stepped into the battleground for the final war, almost all the warriors put up a fight against Raavana but failed to win for obvious reasons. It was time that Ram stepped into the battlefield and fought Raavana, the final and the longest fight of the battle began between Ram and Raavana. After various tries to kill Raavana but failing to do so, Ram was unable to figure out the reason behind it. So, he started his analysis and reached a conclusion to consult Vibhishan with his questions looking for an answer. Vibhishan knew all the secrets of Raavan and hence he was able to answer Ram and inform him about the Amrita hidden in the naval of Ravana, which was yet another blessing received by Raavana because of his Intense Yagya and Dhyaana’s.
At the end, Ram was able to destroy the Amrita and hence kill Raavana, with the successful execution of “PROJECT RAAVANA”.
So, it leads to one important lesson, when you are in a fight, and you seem to be losing despite your best efforts, seek out the help of someone who knows how to tackle the problem, or someone who knows the root cause and the weakness of the problem, this might just make you a better opponent and fuel you to win.
EPILOUGE
With the death of Ravana, the original project of killing all the devils and ending their tyranny came to an end. Peace and humanity were now restored and Mrityu Lok was now free form the tyranny and rule of the most powerful Raksha to have ever walked down on earth.
It was now time to fulfill all the promises made to his ally's, Vibhishan was now made the king of Lanka, Sita Returned to ram and went through Agni Pariksha, only to get back the original Sita in exchange of the shadow, going back to Ayodhya and keeping the words he gave to Bharat, and taking the crown of the king which was Rightfully his. RAM executed the project with a smooth flow.
Following the path of dharma and plotting each and every move with the utmost care and intelligence, while managing his sena all by himself, and putting each and every resource available to him at the perfect place at the perfect time, and making sure to learn along the way of executing the project and making it a success , Ram proved himself to be one of the best Project manager to have ever walked the Earth.
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