Team advantage....

Big achievements need big effort and also usually the big achievements never cause conflicts, competition and jealous. This management lesson appears to be well known to animals than to the corporate man. This was the lesson I got when I saw a pride of lions hunting a well grown buffalo. The buffalo was indeed with its heard. Buffaloes are very dangerous and ferocious and it is not easy to hunt them especially when they are in the heard.

To isolate a buffalo, lions have to work hard as a team. Even after isolating a buffalo, hunting them is not easy. All animals in the pride have to play a role. It may take 30 minutes to one hour to kill the animal. The point to celebrate is that a buffalo catch can easily offer full meal to all animals in the pride. When the catch is big, why to fight for the 'kill' as everyone has their share safe. But to get a big catch, everyone has toil and work as a team. Only team commitment win the lions to have a buffalo kill.

When the catch is small, competition will occur and that would lead to fight and dissatisfaction. Many animals in the group may starve for food.

The message to be drawn by the corporate are
1. Team effort is required for total success
2. Individual and individualized success always cause competition and dissatisfaction

The message is not to have competition at the work place. But do not compete to ensure the win at the individualized or limited to the individual level. The effort should be for total success, which is inclusive of all individuals. Only when the people in a corporate learn to work as team, they can contribute the best both to themselves and the organization. The HR must play a very vital role in creating the atmosphere for people to perform as team.

Unfortunately many single men driven or dominant corporate are the one easily fall prey to 'hero worship' or 'hero orientation' culture where the primary recognition is given to the individuals than to the team. The HR in such organizations loves to play the 'game to chess' to run their show. The talented employees need to be recognized but the culture of working as a team should be mooted and promoted in the organization.

It is not just telling people to work as a team should be assumed as the responsibility of HR in creating team culture. How the reward system should be when a team performs has to be defined explicitly and followed sincerely in the corporate.

Every event, incident and actions in nature has a strong message for corporate to learn and follow. Unless the HR develop sensitivity to learn the management insights from nature, the management approach employed in the corporate can go dumb, deaf and mute.

Ref: Management Book – Jungle wisdom for corporate management – lessons from the university of nature by Swami Sukhabodhananda and Dr S Ranganathan

Dr S Ranganathan, ClinRise Derma Pvt., Ltd.

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