Heart not effort!

the two posts of today are based on request from friends-as I am a known story teller to share some stories-hope you will find it interesting)
Indian Epic Mahabharat has several interesting side stories which makes it an evergreen book for several generations. One such story is about Karna and Krishna. Krishna used to always praise Karna for his greatness of charity. There is a belief that Karna’s hands were always red- eager to donate whatever he had to those who wanted it more than him. As Karna was the sworn enemy of Pandavas the praise of Karna was too much for Bhim and Arjun to bear that too from their mentor Krishna. They used to tell Krishna they are equally good in charity but Krishna is biased towards Karna. Krishna decided to put this to test. One morning he created two hills-one of silver and one of gold. He called Bhim and Arjun with instruction that if they are able to donate this before sunset today he will accept they are better than Karna. Immediately the Pandava brothers accepted the challenge and started to engage huge workforce to dig through the hill. There was an announcement that people can queue up for collecting the gold and silver. Indeed there was huge number of people wanting to have a share of the wealth queue up while the relentless mining of the metal hills was giving boulders of precious metal. Non stop the brothers were donating the proceeds. They skipped even lunch/drinks to ensure that they complete the task. At around 5.30 pm Krishna came to site. He saw about 3/4th of the hill still intact. He commented “Had it been Karna the job would be done!” This incensed Arjun who said “ This shows your bias. Everyone here have seen that we have not even taken a small break from morning. We are so committed and hard working. But you make a snide comment that Karna would have done it?” Krishna maintained” Even now if you say I can ask Karna to complete the task though there is only less than 1 hour for sunset”. Bhim was furious. He said “ If we with our army cannot do it whole day how do you think Karna can do it in 30 minutes? I want you to prove this. Else we will decide you are a cynic”. Krishna called for Karna. He arrived to site. Krishna told him the task and said he had only 10 minutes to complete as it had taken time for him to reach the site. Karna was so happy as the task was what he loved-he said ”This is my pleasure. I will complete it in 1 minute”. He called two bystanders and with folded hands said “ I donate you the silver hill, I am blessed by your acceptance”. “I donate you the gold hill, I am happy with your acceptance” Turning to Krishna he said “Anything more Lord” Krishna smiled and gave a meaningful look at the Pandava brothers. The sun had set in their faces.
I like this story because it tells us that if you have a heart to do something we are able to act in a natural way. Else we justify it by our efforts-I tried my best, this was beyond my control etc. I hear a lot say that support functions should be measured by efforts put in even if results are not visible. There is no doubt efforts should be appreciated but if you have the right motivation and mind set then results should also be visible. So stop measuring efforts, review and renew your heart for delivering results. Core competence of Karna was charity and like Pandavas found that it cannot be imitated we should develop a core competence for delivering results and not seek excuses as in Demand chain we can quote a lot of excuses starting with forecast accuracy, force majure etc!