Be a tit when you run business... a corporate message

How to engage people in the corporate, what kind of responsibility should be assigned to people in different hierarchy and what frequency the corporate leadership should intervene and interfere etc., the leaders and the HR function must know. Only through such wisdom, 'right' and 'judicious' utilization of people is possible.

To have better wisdom, the corporate leaders should follow the Great tit and learn how wisely it attend (allocate time, effort and resource) the chicks in the nest during breeding season.

The baby tits are voracious eaters or in other words, gluttons. The tit parents work hard during this period. Many scientific studies have indicated that the parent tits visit the nest nearly 90 - 100 times a day. The amazing thing about their management wisdom in managing the time, effort and resource are well established.

During early stage of growth of the chicks, the great tits gather only (predominantly) very small worms or insects to feed the chicks. Bigger worms or insects are difficult to swallow for the young chicks. To feed the chicks with smaller worms, the parent birds have to visit the nest frequently. If they attempts to feed the chicks with bigger insects, the time taken for both the chicks to swallow the same and time taken for the parents to feed the chicks, would only increase.

The parent birds want to visit the nest frequently as the chicks are precarious. Every visit, the great tits also wants to use very meaningfully. The above is possible only if they learn to manage all the three important components management viz.,

1. Resource
2. Time
3. Effort
When the chicks are small, feeding them with smaller worms is wise as gathering worms and feeding the chicks will take less time for the parents. When they grow, the parents start feeding them accordingly with larger insects/worms. Such an approach justifies the effort of both the parent bird and the chicks. When effort is duly justified, it means the time is properly used. When effort and time meet the right result, the resource is judiciously utilized.

The corporate leadership must learn how to engage and give responsibility/task to people. Unless the people are engaged properly, both the corporate and the employees, become useless to each other. In such engagements, only resources get wasted, time is lost and suffering/struggle increases.

Engage people accordingly and enable them to take up higher responsibilities with time. Unless the corporate leaders and bosses show the finest leadership quality like the Great Tits, corporate and its people cannot to be lead to success.

Prejudice and favoritism should not determine the aspect of employee engagement. Learn from Great tits about the importance of 'Provisioning of the youngest and the oldest nestling' and that will help every corporate to manage time, resource, effort, and task.

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