Are you moving towards the center or periphery....a leadership message for corporate

Often we tell to people to move to the sides (periphery) of a busy road from its center. Walking on the center of a busy road is always not safe as it might invite accidents. It means, to avoid an accident, pedestrians should prefer the edge of a road than the centre.

If we hit or hammer at the centre of any substance, the peripheral portions would break first and may get separated also. We get our feet cracked especially the peripheral portion with age only due to the above reason i.e., 'stress, pressure and force always migrates to the periphery' and cause damage.

It also conveys another management message to the corporate world. When the boss is in turmoil, the weakest subordinate (even disliked subordinates) will the first target and they are the one suffers the worst. If the torture of the boss continues, the subordinate may move away from the corporate and may look for another job. The people who leave the organizations are the one who have moved away from the center of the corporate. Only when they move away from the centre, they could leave the organization. Moving away from the center does not mean the physical movement. It refers to the movement of people from the core values, beliefs and the HR culture of the organization. As they do so because it is sickening them.

If they are convinced of the values and beliefs of the organization and respect and revere the HR culture, naturally no employee would prefer to leave the organization. When people are frustrated due to the self centered, erratic and eccentric behaviour of the bosses, they move to the periphery of the organization as being in the periphery give them safety.

Usually the bosses are the principle cause of most people leaving the organization. Attrition is more due to bosses than due to those who migrate. But most corporate seldom recognize the above truth because those who have to recognize the above truth are also in the same position having several subordinates. Therefore most bosses wisely prefer to ignore, burry or never speak about the truth especially when the organization suffer from attrition.

Imagine, if the earth does not have gravitational force, you and me also when accidentally moves to the periphery of the earth, would fall into the space and spinning over there, alive or dead. Earth pulls everything towards it. Interestingly the gravitational force is higher in polar regions than in the equatorial line. In the polar regions one may easily slip through if the gravitational force not high. Even when an object jumps to the periphery and tries to off from earth, the gravitational force attracts the object towards it.

The HR culture of the organization should be such even when an employee wishes to leave the organization due to an irritating boss it should attract the employee and dissuade them from leaving the organization. When the HR culture is such, the isolated problems will never interfere and influence the big decisions of people.

Many big decisions and mistakes in our life are triggered largely by some small problems. These problems can be otherwise managed easily. Only the culture of the organization can achieve that and hence the leaders must set only such supportive HR culture in the organization.

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

Desire, Dream and Destination – Social Entrepreneur Forum