Know the Cicada in your organization – HR message from insect world

Every HR function must do a through soul search to understand whether ‘cicadas’ exist in the corporate also.

Most corporate will have plenty of ‘cicadas’ and unfortunately, the corporate may be treating these ‘cicada people’ as high performers, talented group and are part of intelligentsia. Unless the HR and the corporate are taught about Cicada and their life cycle and what it means the organization, they cannot identify the cicadas in the corporate.

Cicada is an insect, indeed a noisy insect, present in most forest ecosystem. The life cycle of cicada is quite interesting to learn. The ‘nymphs’ hatch out from the egg and then the nymphs burry inside the soil. The ‘nymph’ usually live under ground by eating the root sap of many plants. The subterranean life of ‘nymph’ is reported to range between 4 - 17 years. After the subterranean period is over, the nymph will come out and become a winged cicada.

The winged male cicada alone produces noise, and it does so to attract the female cicada. Interestingly, the female cicadas are ‘noiseless’ and are ‘calm’ a very rare phenomena seen among female gender of any life form in general.

The winged cicada lives only for 12 days and within this period they complete mating and egg laying. Cicadas are most noisy during the ‘winged’ stage.

In the life cycle of cicada, about 90% of its life it spent subterranean, hidden and unknown, without showing its unique ‘cicada’ characteristics. Suddenly it comes to the scene with noise, live for a short while and then disappears.

Many employees in most corporate do behave like cicadas. They do nothing or will be calm, silent and unseen. Suddenly during appraisal or review period, they become busy doing and showing many things. During such period, they also try to be as noisy as cicadas just to show to the world that ‘business means business’ to them.

Nature has created a reason for cicadas and hence they behave strangely. The HR in many corporate may not even know the behavioural dynamics of people in the corporate and hence these cicadas happily thrive in the organization.

If you identify a cicada in your corporate, do not blame them, blame yourself first. It is the corporate ecosystem only facilitate and felicitate these cicadas to evolve and live.

Correct the system, naturally the cicada phenomena will disappear. It is not diagnosis of a disease, the treatment matter. When the cause lies in the corporate culture, treat the corporate and correct the culture. Mostly the single man dominant corporate are the one suffer the worst from ‘cicada infestation’.

Every anomaly you observe in people has a message to convey about your corporate culture. Use them as an indicator, do not to punish people but understand and correct the HR culture prevailing in the corporate. That is the message the cicada conveys.

Observe and learn from nature, every creation in nature has a strong management insight to teach. Learn and learn, let the learning be your endless passion and nature be your immortal teacher.

Dr S Ranganathan