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HR wisdom of Ants, modern corporate must know
Highlights
What makes a female ant or a bee to become ‘queen’? The queen bee and queen ant are indeed different from rest of the members of their respective groups viz., hive or a colony. But the question is were they different in the beginning (at birth) or they become different gradually?
What makes a female ant or a bee to become ‘queen’? The queen bee and queen ant are indeed different from rest of the members of their respective groups viz., hive or a colony. But the question is were they different in the beginning (at birth) or they become different gradually?
If they were not different at birth, then how they could become different at the later stage of their life? One needs to ask such question for own inner awakening. Indeed, every corporate must ask the above question and must find an answer. The people of all walks of life necessarily should find answers to the above question.
Plant and animal biology is full of facts and management principles that no management school on earth has ever cognized fully. Reflect this example. The female ant that turn into queen ant is no way different from other female ants when it was born. All the non queen female ants are workers by their profile in the colony. Then how some queen ants are made as queen?
The care that is given to the female ant from the larval stage through adult hood only makes them a worker ant to ‘queen’ ant. The process is same for honey bees also. Look at the wonder, a worker ant is nurtured from birth to its growth and made into a queen to establish a new colony or hive. The worker ants nurse, feed and develop ‘queen’ ants or queen bees from their respective group. The care starts from the larval stage. The total care only makes an ‘ordinary female worker ant’ to become ‘queen’ ant.
The management message conveyed by the ants or honey bees is very loud and clear. None is great by birth or all are equal at birth. Queens are not born but are made. They are indeed made for a purpose.
If the corporate expects great managerial skills and leadership qualities from some people, to meet such expectations, the corporate must invest time, resource and efforts in developing them regularly. Unless such development initiatives and efforts are taken and such people are developed, they would become ‘ordinary’ and will be doing only ordinary job.
How to develop different people in the organization and for what, the corporate and its HR must plan well. How carefully and with great vision, the worker bees/ants develop ‘queens’. It is not just developing queens they are engaged in, but what role the queen will be doing is also well understood by the worker ants or bees in the beginning itself.
It is not just having the expectation is enough but nurturing people in the corporate only will make them perform differently. This is what the bees and ants are doing in their hive and colony.
Just an ordinary ‘worker bee or ant’ can have such a great vision and commitment to the future of their respective clan means how the corporate employees can fail to do so.
Ask and find out what your HR function is doing in the organization for developing leaders?
A small insect can teach you great wonders, provided you are sensitive and patient. Be an observer, listener, leaner and implementer, nature is there to offer its abundant teachings.
Dr S Ranganathan
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