How to be a Good Corporate Leader – Learn from Moth

Moths don’t have stomach. One may wonder how then the moths eat, digest and survive without stomach as stomach is the place where the food enters, get digested before it reaches to different parts of the body. Why this message is important to corporate people? The stomach-less moths has an important management message for the senior leaders in corporate to learn and follow.

Moths are a group of insects similar to butterflies and differ only in their nocturnal habitats and wings at rest. The former is largely nocturnal and its wings are spread at rest whereas the butterflies are diurnal and their wings are closed at rest.

Generally the moths pass through a life cycle of ‘egg, larva, pupa and adult moth’. During larva stage, they are voracious and greedy eaters, cause great destruction to the green cover. After leading a life of ‘greedy eater’ for sometime, they enter into the next phase called ‘pupa’. The pupa stage is ‘quite and quiescent’, virtually will not have any activity. Like a hermit under ‘deep trance’, they pass their life and become a fully grown moth one day.

When they become a moth, they continue their life with some traits of their previous ‘phase’ i.e. eat little and live just for the purpose of laying eggs and then die. They eat predominantly the plant sap, nectar etc.

The management insight to be learned is that how this group of insects renounces certain habits especially the need and greed to eat when climb the ladder of growth from larva to moth so should be the leaders in corporate. When the larva becomes a moth, it eats nectar and lives just for a few days to mate and lay eggs and then dies.

Moth does not have stomach as it had renounced the greedy eating habit when it attains the moth hood. The moth live with much bigger vision and purpose and that is how they differentiate and distinguish themselves from their previous larva phase.

The corporate leaders must imbibe the philosophy of moths. When they become senior leaders like Vice President, President, Directors etc., they should retire from the habit of competing, settling score or proving the power and authority upon their subordinates, claim more increments and perks and give less to below etc.

Only the vision and value should drive them and lead them. The senior leaders should abstain permanently from ‘petty politics’ and ‘third rate skirmish’.

Unfortunately, the senior leaders in most corporate behave badly and carry the mind set of how to belittle and outscore their subordinates. They live a life of ‘larva’ even after transforming as ‘moth’.

The height of insecurity, immaturity, cheapness, cunningness and cleverness can be seen so vivid and abundant in senior leaders in some corporate. Such leaders resides largely in single man owned corporate than in MNC’s as the MNC’s follow reasonably a value based culture.

Dr S Ranganathan