Expense on Advertisement and R&D can fool you dear corporate – HR message from golden shower tree

Have we ever asked the question as why plants produce so many numbers of flowers? The plant Cassia fistula popularly called as ‘golden shower tree’ can tell how prodigal they are during late spring. The cassia fistula plant flower during late spring (April to May) and in most instances, the tree will be filled only with golden yellow coloured flowers and nothing else. Even the leaves are hard to see in those plants during the flowering season.

Are the plants prodigal? Do they need to be so aggressive in their reproduction and procreation? Is nature so rude and cruel to them and hence they have to ‘use the chance and must maximize it to their favour’, hence produce a large number of flowers and seeds.

Look at the specialties of golden shower plant. It can easily live in arid and hot zones. Requires less water can withstand hot and cold. Can live and grow in plains and on slopes of a mountain. Even it can resist salinity of the soil and survive in the saline environment. The story of its adaptation will tell us that nature is indeed kind and supportive to the plant to live in wherever it has to or it wish to.

Despite having all the advantages why the plant still incurs such huge expense in producing so innumerable flowers. The plant even shed its leaves to prevent transpiration lead water loss in order to support the abundant flowers it has produced, until the process of pollination is complete.

Is the approach of golden shower plant wise or unwise?

A great resource management insight every corporate must learn from the plant Cassia fistula. Perhaps, the plant may be the philosophy that producing more flowers means more seeds and more seeds mean more new plants. For the above cause, it is worth being ‘prodigal’.

But do they get any reward proportional to their expenditure? The simple answer would be no. The cassia plants are seen only in the places where most other plants generally fail to grow. It means cassia could grow easily in the places that are not so favourable to many plants in general.

The irony is that the cassia plant despite having produced so much of flowers and seeds, still could not exploit the best ‘soil’.

Many corporate do follow the same management principle unknowingly. By way of competing with MNC’s, they incur huge investment for giving advertisement to their ‘primitive/ordinary’ or ‘mass market’ products which in fact may not have any merit. Their belief is that giving advertisement means they can carve premium image to their otherwise ordinary products and can enhance sales. But, in all probability, they fail to reap any profit out of their expense. The profit will be inversely proportional to their advertisement expense.

The reason being, they are expert only in meeting the needs of ‘mass market’ and are unfit and irrelevant to fulfill the needs of ‘posh and premium customers’.

Look at the cassia plant. It is expert in growing in places where many other plants may not able to grow. To facilitate seed dispersal and seed germination in such places, the plant has to produce more seeds, hence, it does. The expense incurs towards it, it wisely justifies.

The management lesson of Cassia fistula or golden shower plant is more appropriate for the marketing and R&D functions. Before they invest, they need to know what they propose to see as a result. Unless this arithmetic is done correctly, in the beginning, all the resources the corporate may siphon out on an advertisement or in R&D would result in a loss, debt and insolvency.

Dr S Ranganathan