Winner and loser, both follows the same strategy – HR message from pride of lion

The possibility of success and failure always co-exist. Therefore, people should not assume that the failure and success exist separately and are always away from each other. It is not how close they exist, how and what one wish to see, approach and interpret the events only makes the difference.

Living in group would always offer strength and security and that is why many animals including man live as herd, pride, troop, colony etc. This is a well known global norm. Imagine for the animal like lion that lives in open country as pride (as group) really gain success or failure from group living? Always spotting animals when they move as a group especially in an open country is quite easy. It means the prey animals can easily spot the lion although colour camouflage helps the lion to hide its presence.

But for the lion, living in group offers only strength. If they hunt alone, the chance of hunt success is almost remote. When they hunt in group, even large prey animal like wild buffalo also, they can easily kill.

The interesting question is that how with such limitations still the lion could remain as top predator? May be lions instead of seeing the possibility of failure by living as pride, might be seeing the strength of such group living. Living in group not only creates the chance of spotting them easily by the prey animals, sharing of the prey to other members in the pride is also another problem that would often cause insufficiency/scarcity of food.

May be lions are deriving the right interpretation of success from living in group. If lion has made the possibility of failure as the interpretation from living as pride, perhaps, they would have made things worse for them where successive hunt failure and starvation death would have been the only outcome.

Ironically lions may be following the above rule to easily spot its prey as well. They take advantage of their prey animals especially that live as herd. The prey animals when live in large group, the lion can see them easily.

The interesting point is that the prey animals have preferred to live in group to easily spot the danger so that they can swiftly escape. On the other hand, the lion preferred to live in group especially to increase its success chance of hunt.

Whatever be the strategy one evolves out of fear and it is meant to escape from the danger, all such strategies would give scope only to escape and avoid the danger and not to face the danger and the strategy (live in group) become a mere tool and the ‘fear’ only the key determinant factor of success.

On the other hand, the success of lion lies in its strategy and not how easily the prey species would see them or how to share the kill among all members in the pride.

The message is that if one weaves out even a finest strategy out of fear, it is not the strategy, only fear is going to determine the failure or success.

On the contrary, despite having highest chance of getting seen by the prey animals, if one defines a finest strategy for success, the strategy will certainly bring success.

The lion instead of seeing its vulnerability in living as group, it uses its strategy to win.

Corporate people often evolve many strategies out of fear and leave the decision making power to fear. Whereas some smart leaders sense the vulnerability but evolve strategy not yielding to such vulnerability or fear and become successful.

One must understand the important fact that the possibility of success and failure always co-exist. Therefore whether one should take decisions out of fear or deal the situation with wise strategy only makes the difference.

Dr S Ranganathan