Groundhogs and their corporate message

Many woodchucks (groundhogs) do live in most corporate. They remain so, both knowingly and without being aware of such status. If the corporate and its HR function know such idiosyncrasy of some people in exhibiting the groundhog behaviour, they can properly 'utilize' the complete potential these people. Woodchucks are a group of marmots belong to the class Rodents. They live underground by making burrows/tunnels that are deep.

The interesting thing about this animal is that they usually make two to three entrances to their burrows to escape in the event of any danger. When they live so deep inside the burrows, why they still keeps many entrances to their burrows to escape and why still they carry such fear and insecurity. Quite contrary to groundhogs, many other rodents, their counterparts in land, never seem to 'overdo' anything to secure their life like woodchucks.

The reason being is that when we attempts to secure life by creating the 'most' secured areas around us, still the security and safety of life would appear in doubt. A squirrel that lives inside a small tree hole has more reason to worry about its life than for the woodchucks, as the burrows of the woodchucks are quite deep.

The message is that the issue of 'insecurity' is high even in subterranean habitat. The fact is that when we assume we are more secured, more fear about the 'security' arises.

Whenever a corporate employee does some 'trick', always they set many ways to escape from the mess, when caught. Some corporate employees always operate from such mindset. To escape, they create many entrances/emergency exits well before committing the mischief.

For their definite failures, they will ensure many 'scapegoats' in advance for sacrifice. For their inefficiency, irresponsibility, callousness, they always try to hide inside a deep tunnel like the woodchucks. Like woodchucks, they also know the fact that however deep the burrow may be, keeping multiple entrances are inevitable to escape. They know their mischief and hence they build many ways to cover up the truth.

They are insecure because they have every reason to feel insecure. Understand these people as they are digging deep burrows in the foundation of your corporate. The very structure of your corporate culture may fall and crumble one day due to these people.

Unfortunately, the senior employees in most corporate only exhibit the behaviour of woodchucks and not the people below the rank. The HR function must learn this fact and must act accordingly to free the corporate from such 'subterranean' groundhogs.

Dr S Ranganathan, ClinRise Derma Pvt., Ltd., Chennai

Learn more from the following management books
1. Jungle wisdom for corporate management – lessons from the university of nature by Swami Sukhabodhananda and Dr S Ranganathan

2. Nature – The Entrepreneur by Dr S Ranganathan

Dr S Ranganathan, ClinRise Derma Pvt., Ltd., Chennai