It is results season, and meetings are happening across every company I know. Numbers are being presented, and explanations are being offered for what went right and what went wrong. Most of these explanations will land on one or two factors: either the market moved against us, or the team did not execute. After 27 years of these meetings, I can tell you that both explanations are usually incomplete.
The Bhagwad Gita offers a superb framework in verse 18.14. Krishna lays out five factors behind every action and its result: the place of action, the doer, the instruments at the doer's disposal, the effort and purpose behind the action, and the fifth, the will of God.
Four of the five are entirely in your hands. The place you chose to operate from, the capabilities you built in yourself, the tools and people you assembled around you, and the quality of effort and intention you brought to the work. These four are yours to own, to prepare, to sharpen, to align. The fifth is not in your hands. And my experience tells me that when the first four are done with honesty and clean purpose, the fifth tends to follow.
Karna is the Mahabharata's most painful illustration of this. His archery was supreme, and his courage was beyond question. His effort on the battlefield that final day was everything a warrior could give. And yet his chariot wheel sank into the earth at the worst possible moment. The fifth factor did not show up for him. Commentators have debated why for centuries, and the simplest answer the epic offers is that his purpose, his reason for being on that battlefield, was not aligned with dharma. The four factors were extraordinary in isolation, and the foundation they were standing on was not.
When I look at my own results this quarter, I find 18.14 more useful than any business framework I have encountered. It asks me to honestly audit four things I can control and to stop wasting energy on the one thing I cannot.
It reminds me that the quality of the fifth factor is usually a reflection of how cleanly I have done the first four.