What made kings what they were ?

Recently I was going through some of the articles on internet on the history of Mughal dynasty. It was really interesting to know that this dynasty ruled India for more than 900 years .. which is 9 centuries. It is amazing to know how the dynasty went from strength to strength in its earlier years. But it more amazing to know how this dynasty had a downfall during its last century especially when Aurangzeb came in.

It was lot of intrigue and curiousity that sprung up inside me - when I drew parallel to these kings from Aurangzeb onwards to the current big leaders in our world we have. If I need to use a one single word that draws a parallel in old and new times regarding the downfalls - it is "ARROGANCE".

We can see that right from flourishing and then downfall of Mughal empire, British empire etc. etc. In the world scenarios also, if we look at "Greek empires", "Roman Empires" - the empires that took centuries to make and flourish - it just took one or two kings to bring it down to the level of spec of dust with their "ARROGANCE".

It is really interesting to put this whole disucssion in perspective of a modern teams in the corporations. Companies (read executives) that work in a "Arrogant" manner finally have to bite the dust in long term. Leadership does not come from the fact that you have done exteremely well in your yester-years. Leadership comes from the fact that if you had a zero-sum game to play, how well you would be playing it and that is when you have to kick "Arrogance" out of the window. You can't be arrogant if you have zero balance in your bank.

I happened to listen to Infosys chairman "Naraian Murthy" sometime back in his interview. He had an interesting point when he was asked on how the top management of Infosys conducts itself when talking to press or employees etc. He said that he and top bosses of Infosys have taken a concious decision that they would always talk high about their organization but would never ever get "I" or "We" in those bragging-sessions. Same is the reason that he does not plan to write any "autobiography" or "biography" of himself which is nothing but brag-sheet of how a person fought through all the odds to create something as big as Infosys ( Revenue : 2 billion $USD). I could see that he wasn't arrogant and that is why I see there would be a big future to his company.

Other example would he Hewlett Packard's ex CEO Carly Fiorina - one of the most powerful women at her times. Her challenge was to turnaround company after merger with Compaq. I remember reading news reports that in the downturn time, employees in HP/Compaq were being fired and HP top executives were getting big bonuses etc. You stop listening to your employees - it means that you just have arrogance and you believe you can turn around things with or without people.

What comes up has to come down one day - because we don't have shortage of successful people who are arrogance personified.