Article on Bhakti-vriksha 2

This frank admission of the challenges faced by the Bhakti-vriksha program is a breath of fresh air.

Here are a few of my observations:

1. Lack of leadership support

One of the issues explained in this article is a lack of widespread support for the initiative by the leadership of ISKCON.

One of the qualities of an effective manager or leader is realism. Leaders need to be able to make a realistic assessment of the situation, in order to calculate a course from where they are now to where they want to go. "Know yourself and know your enemy and you need not fear defeat in any battle". Another word for this is "practical".

Unfortunately a lot of the information coming out of the Congregational Ministry up to this point has been transparently unrealistic. Managers want to know about the bottom line. "What are the cold hard facts"? From the Congregational Ministry so far we've been hearing inflated accounts of successes "in other parts of the world". Level headed organizers and administrators have not been taken in by this, and have not lent their support to it as a result.

This kind of hype may work on the simple masses, but jedi mind tricks and smoke and mirrors are of no use on the kind of people whose support you need. They want to know what's really going on.

2. "Over-promised, under-delivered"

The Bhaktivriksha program has committed the cardinal sin of "over-promising and under-delivering". Too much hype was created as a way of trying to create a massive wave of enthusiasm. Instead it needs to be approached in a level manner with management of expectations.

First of all: "These are the challenges that you are facing". To demonstrate that you have a realistic appreciation of the situation.

"Here is the opportunity". Explaining how the cell structure of Bhaktivriksha addresses these challenges.

"Here are the present success stories". Showing what has happened in ISKCON, and what has happened outside ISKCON.

"Here are the problems". Explaining that no-one has yet converted an existing ISKCON yatra to the cell model.

At this point we have at least one very successful BV yatra which demonstrates the potential. However, we have not been able to convert from a classical ISKCON organizational structure to a BV structure. That's OK. We don't have to obscure this fact. It is at a pioneering stage. If you're willing to explore the potential of this program, we're willing to go along with you. We'll all be learning as we go, because as we explained, there is so far no success story - but you can see the potential.

Some forward thinking leaders will work with this. Otherwise they just see an unproven system being pushed by unrealistic people in either a naive or dishonest fashion, and there is no way they are going to risk their present success, however close to failure their yatra may be, on that.

In the article you mention that ISKCON yatras are failing. However, you cannot provide one example of where you have saved one with BV. *That* is why leaders are not going to take to it whole-heartedly. Effective managers and leaders are extremely practical. ISKCON's present leaders got where they are now by making safe bets on calculated risks, not by embracing every snake-oil salesman who rolls into town.

Adjust the pitch and try to create a single reference site. Manage the expectations and work with a brutally realistic but visionary manager who is open to trying this somewhere in ISKCON.

This is not another program - it's a replacement organizational paradigm

Something that needs to be very clear is that this is not simply another program - this is a replacement organizational paradigm.

There are two implications of this:

1) If you try to chase two rabbits, both will get away

Without understanding that this is a new organizational paradigm that will undergird the entire yatra you end up with these two conflicting organizational models. Dilemmas arise: "Who's in charge? What's the relationship between the BV and the temple? What's the authority structure?". Energy to one sucks energy from the other. The success of one is at the expense of the other.

2) You are in direct opposition to the current temple organizational paradigm

The temple became successful (whatever state they are) following a particular paradigm. You are trying to replace this underlying paradigm. Although initially it's presented as another program that you add in, soon it becomes apparent, either through its symptoms, or when devotees grasp the implications, that you are going to change the entire fundamental power structure of the community.

You are undermining the authority and the processes of the existing yatra. People got to where they are doing certain things in a certain way, and you're about to do away with that. That's very, very scary for people. They respond by trying to protect their personal situation to keep it safe, and that manifests collectively as an attack on the BV. At the very least it manifests as indifference, but more usually it will result in preaching against it (or preaching against some of its symptoms), withdrawing resources, etc....

Obviously where there is no previously "successful" (or rather entrenched) paradigm to displace, BV starts up a lot easier.

These points need to be understood. If BV is going to be implemented in an ISKCON yatra it needs to be clearly discussed and understood that this represents a complete conversion to a fundamentally different paradigm of organization. This is going to lead to a different structure of power. If this is clearly understood and the leadership is fully committed to it, then it can be worked through. Otherwise it will be a train wreck. The BV and the temple are headed for a head-on collision.

At this point there is no roadmap for doing a conversion. No-one has pulled it off yet. So whoever agrees to doing this has to agree to the following things (essentially):

Some combination of the following:
1 a) We're in such a bad state right now that we'll try anything - we have nothing to lose so we're willing to bet the farm.
1 b) We can see the huge potential of this and are so inspired by it that we're willing to bet the farm on it.

2) We understand that this implies giving up our present paradigm for a new paradigm of organization, that it involves trusting people and allowing the yatra to expand beyond what we can "control" and trusting in our ability to "direct" it through preaching.

3) We understand that this has never been done before and that we are pioneering this process of transition.

4) We understand that this involves a massive amount of fundamental change and this will be very unsettling for people. People will be asked to give up what made them successful individually, and will be asked to have faith in a new way of organizing the yatra, going against their experience to this point. We acknowledge these challenges. We commit to open communication, complete honesty and transparency, ongoing discussion and analysis in order to help people to understand, process, and adapt to these changes.

5) We have the complete commitment of our leadership to this course of action.

Without this BV cannot be successful in an existing ISKCON yatra without killing the temple. Which hasn't happened yet either, but at the moment the only hope for a successful conversion is for an ISKCON temple to become so weak that an inspired and dedicate BV preacher is able to overwhelm it with a BV program.

It's no surprise that ISKCON leaders haven't supported this. Basically in areas where there are ISKCON temples you've been getting some fringe visionaries who are discontented with the current status quo to start it and pitting them against the temple power structure. Existing temple authorities have everything to lose, and little to gain, based on what they've seen other temple managers gain as a result of giving up control.

ISKCON leaders en masse will have more faith in this when there is a successful implementation. I would focus on creating one success first.