Jeby Cherian, Managing Partner, IBM Global Services, speaks to Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, Founder, Isha Foundation, about the various challenges faced by entrepreneurs and executives during their work life

As an individual what is your incentive to go out and find out the next new thing if I am not able to monetize it?

Ideas can be monetized to a certain extent but all ideas being monetized will obviously cripple society over a period of time. If money is the only incentive I think it’s a very poor life.

Entrepreneur’s challenges while wanting to grow big…

If you want to operate in large situations, the larger the situation gets, more things will be out of control. If a situation is small you can keep everything under control. Once it gets large, a whole lot of things will not happen the way you think it should happen. For most human beings on this planet the only source of misery in their life is something is not happening in the way they think it should happen. Life is not working out the way they want. So the fear of suffering is the biggest block for any kind of enterprise.

You must first work upon yourself which is completely missing. You are stepping into areas where there could be 50 percent chance of failure. If there is 90 percent chance of failure and you still continue, then you are a true adventurer if you succeed but if you get killed on the way they will think you are foolish. But if there is 90 percent chance of failure and nobody wants to go there and you go there and make it a success, then you are a celebrated adventurer.

Is there an alternative model that you are proposing of scaling up?

If it’s destructive to do more you shouldn’t be doing more. There are a whole lot of things in the world, it will GuruMantra be better if more of it happens. Those are the things that need to be scaled up. This is not something that we need to make a judgment on a daily basis. Are you driven by your purpose or are you driven by whim or lust for money, that’s the whole thing.

Is money wrong? No, money is either right or wrong. As long as you understand that money was created only as a means, never as a goal.

How do you overcome that fear of suffering?

You don’t overcome the fear of suffering; you need to understand that all human experiences are being generated from within. Fear is a great crippler of everything and it’s not a good feeling to live with. If you have no fear of suffering, you have no fear of anything.

Your view on so many scams in India and why do people do that?

That is an essential thing that the world is yet to recognize, ultimately it’s the quality of human beings that we produce, and it will determine the efficiency of everything. So I have been repeating this continuously that if you feel that your work is important, the first thing that you need to work with is that you have to work upon yourself. This culture existed in this land for a long time, first thing you need to work upon yourself and only then touch work. We have to bring this back at least into those who are going to be entrepreneurs or administrators’, policy makers. The leadership in the country and the world must have this inner experience, inner strength, inner balance which is not determined by outside forces.