Find out Red-bellied turtles and Alligators in your corporate – HR message

In many corporate, some ‘extra smart’ subordinates may be ‘smartly’ exploiting the ‘unawareness’ of their bosses to run their easy show. The advantage for them is that their bosses blindly believe whatever such subordinates say because they are completely unaware of the facts. On the contrary, other members of the team may feel very sulky and sullen and wonder 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 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 such question.

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 use the ‘unawareness’ of the alligators only to benefit to a limited extent. 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 center.

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 about the mutually benefiting association and whether it is bad or good, such association should not be allowed to harm corporate ecosystem is what nature is teaching us through its best example of ‘red-bellied turtle and alligator’.

Dr. S Ranganathan