The corporate leaders and HR function must know about the behaviour of thorny devil....
Thorny devil is a small lizard that lives in some parts of Australia. This lizard, unlike other animals, never run away when encounters a predator. As the name defines, the thorny devil shows/exhibits its spiky body and tries to scare away the predator.
Another interesting fact about this lizard is that it has a specialized ‘head’ like structure behind its head. This lizard, when threatened, hides its head between the forelimbs and tends to show its false head as its real head.
In many instances, the predators by seeing the false head of the thorny devil as real and used to move away without harming the prey. The interesting thing is that the false head of the lizard appear more confusing or real to its predators than its ‘real’ head.
Indeed a great management message the corporate has to learn from the predator avoidance behaviour of thorny devil. In most boss-subordinate relationship in every corporate, believing the ‘false’ as ‘real’ prevails and influences majority of the decision process.
In every communication, the false facts appear more real to people than the real facts. It is not due to the inability of people in differentiating the false from real, the way they are presented makes the difference. It is not the mere false head of the thorny devil does the wonder, but how smartly the thorny devil present its false head only makes the trick thereby it confuses its predators.
Both the boss as well as the subordinates uses the techniques of thorny devil in most corporate. To convince the opponent or to scare away the opponent, more often than not, the facts that are not true work better than what is true.
Is it that the thorny devil is too smart or its predators are too foolish? Neither is true in one sense or both are true in other sense. When the predator approaches the lizard with suspicion, the lizard smartly capitalizes the suspicion. The suspicion is mainly due to lack of adequate knowledge or understanding.
If the predator has adequate knowledge about the thorny devil and its trick, never would have believed the same. But nature has never made the predator with such limitation only to balance the prey-predator equilibrium. But it is not true with corporate people. They have the wisdom and intelligence.
The bosses’ when stop approaching the subordinates like predators approaching the prey, the subordinates would never exhibit ‘thorny devil’ display in corporate.
If the HR function ever understands the cultural element of the corporate, they can easily stop the problem of seeing and believing what is ‘unreal’ as ‘real’. It is not doubt and suspicion, understanding and trust is what required in corporate relationship.
Dr S Ranganathan, ClinRise Derma Pvt., Ltd., Chennai
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