The horned lizard is known to use different techniques to deal its predators like running away from the scene, inflate the body....
The techniques what the employees commonly employs in the corporate to deal a particular boss will not work when a new boss enter the scene and assumes the role. But, the people, like a machine, continue to exploit the same technique with a hope that it will work well with the new boss as well.
When their effort fails, they start blaming the entire corporate culture, people, how the attitude and approach of the corporate has changed, how ungrateful the corporate has become towards the old timers etc.
The technique to deal a particular boss may not and need not work with the new boss is a gospel truth and how and why these ‘long’ serving corporate employees have got no idea about the same, who should find the answer. They relay more on the age old techniques or learning, but never accept the fact that time has changed. This is not absolutely true with some employees in the corporate as similar approaches can be seen among some animals in nature also.
The best example we can quote from the nature to educate the people in corporate as how their ‘learning and techniques’ to deal a particular situation are time dependent and how they can go completely defunct when situation changes from the unique defense approach of the horned lizard.
The horned toad or otherwise called as horned frog/horned lizard can serve the best wisdom to the corporate people in this regard.
The horned toad/frog is a small lizard that prefers to live in hot, open country. The perfect camouflage advantage the animal obtains from its colour to live in the open country. Whenever there is a threat, the animal either stay motionless or run or inflate its body to show it is much bigger than what its predators could understand. This is how most animals also try to challenge their threat.
But another very unique approach also the horned lizard employs to deal its predators. When threatened, the horned frog squirts the blood out from the corner of the eyes targeted towards the predator as defense. This is a very unique method of confusing the predator. The cat or dog or other small predators avoid the horned toad as the squirt blood tastes bad. When the blood tastes bad, naturally the predators are made to assume that the prey would also to be tasteless and not worth eating.
This technique works well for the horned lizard to deal many species of the land dwelling predatory animals but not against the birds. Before even the horned lizard employ its technique of defense against birds, the birds would attack the horned toad swiftly and grab them in their claws.
The unique defense mechanism of squirting blood from the corner of the eye is not an easy trait and it would not have evolved without ensuring definite profit to the animal. While squirting blood, the animals do incur huge blood loss and hence this unique approach is very costly to them. Therefore, it is expected that the maximum benefit (dealing wide range of predators) would have been seen and included, prior to the evolution of such trait. But this approach is seems to have been totally defunct against birds.
The corporate employees should learn the fact that no technique or learning is going to support them forever and what really would support them is how they constantly update and improvise them. Update the knowledge adequately and create ‘contemporariness’ & relevance to the context. It is not technique but your wisdom will support you to deal all situations.
Dr S Ranganathan, ClinRise Derma Pvt., Ltd., Chennai
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