Turtles act as 'proxy' bosses... a corporate message

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In many corporate, some ‘smart’ subordinates ‘smartly’ exploits the ‘unawareness’ of their bosses to run their easy show.  The advantage for them is that their bosses blindly believe whatever the subordinates say or are unaware of the facts.  On the contrary, other members of the team may feel very sulky and sullen as why the bosses behave so stupidly.  

 

If we carefully examine the corporate that are mostly run as ‘single man’s corporate’, we can see the existence of such bosses and subordinates in plenty.  Nature too has some best example for the corporate man to learn and understand about how the unawareness can help the weaker one (subordinates) to benefit at the expense of the former (bosses).

 

The red bellied turtles in Florida are known to use the nest of ‘Alligators’ to lay their eggs.  ‘Alligators’ are believed to be unaware of the ‘trick’ of the red bellied turtle. 

 

The question of whether the ‘Alligators’ have ever given consent to the turtles to do so, only the Alligators or the turtles can answer or vouch for.

 

Definitely, the Alligators defend their nest from raccoons and other egg snatchers and this would directly benefit the red bellied turtle to protect their eggs easily.  The ‘red bellied turtles’ by themselves cannot offer such protection to their eggs.  Further, the requirement for hatching the eggs of turtle and alligator are more or less similar. 

 

Intelligently the red bellied turtles lay their eggs either a little beneath strata where the alligator’s eggs are kept or a little away from it.  Thanks to the alligators, red bellied turtles could stay lazy by not doing enough parental care and also could keep their procreation process successful. 

 

Many red bellied turtles can be found in corporate.  They smartly manage to take their bosses on board and have a free run in the corporate.  The ‘red bellied turtles’ in the corporate is indeed different from the one that found in nature. 

 

In nature, the turtles uses the ‘unawareness’ of the alligators only to benefit to a limited extend.  Whereas, the corporate ‘red bellied turtles’ besides benefiting also uses the opportunity to harm the corporate harmony.  Because of the blind faith of the bosses on them, the subordinates more often act as ‘proxy’ bosses or alternate power centre. 

 

The corporate leaders and the HR function must be aware of both the ‘red bellied turtles’ and the awareness less ‘alligators’ that exist in the corporate ecosystem.  It is not mutually benefiting association is bad, such association should not be allowed to harm habitat is what the nature is teaching us through its best example of ‘red bellied turtle and alligator’.

 

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

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