From Mexican jumping bean to modern HR

A very interesting management insight the Mexican jumping beans conveys to the corporate people across the world. The Mexican jumping bean is a shrub, which is botanically called as Sebastiana pavoniana, produces the bean. The interesting aspect is that inside the seed pods of the plant, especially inside the beans, the larva of some insects reside. They make their entry inside the pod during flowering season.

The bean looks completely intact and healthy from outside with no sign of the larva that lives inside. If the bean were exposed to sun, due to the radiation of heat, the larva moves inside the bean in order to escape from the radiating heat. If they remain motionless, they will get killed easily and if they move vigorously inside, they can minimize the contact time with the wall of the bean. Interestingly the movement of the larva intern would cause the bean to jump from one place to another. This is how the bean got its famous name – Mexican jumping bean.

If the larva is not inside the bean, the bean is a seed that will never show any sign of movement or life, until the seeds grow to a new plant when they are placed in a favourable environment.

Seeds of no plants would usually show the sign of any life in visible form by either moving from one region to another or by jumping etc.

But the jumping bean moves and jumps because of the larva that reside inside them.

Larva represents life. When ‘life’ is inside or within, movements like jumping, running, dancing etc., are possible. The power and spirit of life come mainly from the ‘life’ from within or from inside and not from elsewhere or outside of us.

The corporate people must imbibe this message strongly. Only when they are ‘alive’ from within and from ‘inside’ they can create vibrancy and value. Unfortunately, many corporate employees are dead from within and alive only because of the external world.

In most occasions they believe that they can be alive only if the fallacy of the corporate exists around them.

Look at the Mexican jumping bean, it jumps and dance because it has ‘life inside’. The life from within only makes the jumping bean alive and sensitive to the changes of the environment such as heat or cold.

Only when the corporate people are alive from within, they can be sensitive to the global realities and fast approaching changes in the market place. Otherwise, they believe that what they already know are ‘finale’ and ‘ultimate’.

Most of the single man driven corporate used to anchor to such culture. The people in such corporate generally are dead from inside and live only to ‘praise and please’ the ‘single man’ in the corporate.

They largely believe that they are alive because of the ‘single man’ and otherwise they are dead.

Discover the life within you and inside you and that alone will keep you alive to the world. Learn about the Mexican jumping beans and try to be a ‘jumping bean’ in your corporate.

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