Nature, in its broadest sweep, and Life, in
its microcosmic splendor, are two of the most powerful and amazing creations of
God. The human race has distinguished itself in this creative canvas as the one
driven by its ability to think, analyze and execute, in summary developing
itself and the society continuously. Long before management and leadership
became domains of learning, human beings intrinsically and intuitively became
self-driven in the game of positive evolution, going beyond (probably not
completely though) the Darwinian thesis of the Survival of the Fittest. Arts,
Science and Technology have been the first domains of organized knowledge
building while Management and Leadership have been more recent additions, all
of them making the human race a differentiated species. The domain of Arts remains
as the eternal aesthetic aspect of knowledge while science and technology are the
two unstoppable drivers of socio-economic development. Management and
leadership, in contrast, have emerged as stylistic rather than substantial
domains.
It is typical that science and technology are
experimentally learnt, and management and leadership are experientially learnt.
Life and nature have been the greatest models of learning and development as
well as challenge and opportunity for science and technology. Whether it is the
airplane that mimicked the bird or the robot that mimics the human being and
whether it is synthetic life or artificial intelligence, products of science
and technology are invariably developed by emulating life. In contrast, management
and leadership seem to learn or unlearn little from the nature and biological
forms of life, save some references to the cheetahs for competitive spirit, and
ostriches for needing to be open. Interestingly, the ancient Indian wisdom has
Panchatatra that teaches several lessons of management and leadership through
tales of the animal kingdom. This blog post considers one of the most
interesting parables of all times, the hare and tortoise story (of ‘slow and
steady winning the race’) to develop some contemporaneous management and
leadership insights.
Fast, smart or wise?
In the increasingly competitive world, speed and
“time to…” are considered the critical facets of competitive advantage. Successful
industrialists who build new generation brands, firms and conglomerates in short
frames of time, encourage the thesis that time is the most important resource,
even compared to costs; the thesis implies that cost overruns could be
recovered but time overruns would never be. Fast growth usually focuses on only
one dimension of growth, for example revenues, market share or profit. Unidirectional
fast growth does more harm than good in the long run. Fast growth often entails
saturated deployment of resources which could be questionable in the long run. Smart
growth attempts more balanced growth, for example revenues with profitability
or market share with profit share. Smart growth, in contrasts, often entails
judicious deployment of resources, including integration of differentiated and
niche strategies within mass generic strategies. Smart growth impresses with
intellectual prowess and commercial cleverness.
Wise growth, on the other hand, focuses on
sustainability while leveraging smartness. Leaders who believe in wise growth
consider the race for competitiveness as a marathon rather than as a sprint. Wise
leaders are sensitive to the environment and society as much as to their teams
and themselves. They have a balanced view of all things that are relevant and
appropriate; science and technology with management and leadership, the past with
the future, entity performance with social good. They are able to integrate
values and ethics seamlessly with commercial considerations and appreciate the
subtle as opposed to gross; for example, differentiate between equity and
equality. Typically, wise growth involves moving to, rather than jumping to
conclusions. This is dependent on introspection and reflection as a trait as
much as conceptualization and analysis.
The proverbial hare and tortoise story has
relevance in these three shades of growth. Managers and leaders who drive growth,
often reckless, are like hares who push themselves, and their firms, into
unacceptable positions. Managers and leaders who constantly look for niche and
expertise are like tortoises that are dependent on bumbling hares or others’
harebrained ideas; their success tends to be based on relativity of smartness. Managers
and leaders who ensure sustainability in their firms, in every dimension of
their performance, are like hares which act as tortoises, combining speed with
sensitivity and fastness with smartness; they tend to be wise leaders. Hares and
tortoises have certain characteristics that make them what they are; a
corporate hare and tortoise analogy requires a combination of the
characteristics of hares and tortoises.
Hares and tortoises
Hares are adorable little animals of the
animal world. Hares are similar to their cousins the rabbits, but carry several
important differences. While rabbits dig burrows, hares do not, living instead
on the open ground. This is reflected in their stronger build, as running from
predators is their only way to safety. They can approach speeds of over 70 kmph
for short bursts, significantly faster than most other animals. Hares have
strong hind legs which support such bursts of high speed. Another
characteristic feature is the largeness of the hare's ears which help the hare
hear or sense a predator coming from a mile away. This enables the hares, which
are vulnerable, to survive the dangerous competitiveness of the animal world by
darting away. Hares with their irrepressible impatience and instinctive speed are
quintessential representatives of certain entrepreneurial, managerial and
leadership behaviors.
The tortoises, in contrast, are the
antithesis of the anticipated managerial behavior. They are rugged, slow and
somewhat uncouth. They are, however, blessed with the hardest protective shell
and have the ability to hide their vulnerable limbs within its protective shell
when danger is sensed. Some biologists hypothesize that slow lives lead to long
lives as exemplified by tortoises. Turtles and tortoises are considered harbingers
of good luck. The hare and tortoise story imbues certain wisdom to the tortoise
of making steady but slow progress to the winning post in contrast to the hare
which sprinted off to a great start only to doze off with a false sense of
invincibility vis-à-vis the slow tortoise. In today’s world of hyper-competition,
hyper-fast harebrained strategizing and execution may act counter to right
timing and right scoping while tortoise-like super-slow approach may be equally
unhelpful.
Hare as tortoise
For the corporate world, the story of hare
and tortoise can only be a simile and not a model. A firm, to be a wise firm
(and a manager or a leader to be a wise one) needs to be able to combine the
virtues of hare and tortoise and eschew their weaknesses. Like a hare, a firm needs to be fast and
nimble but cannot afford to be harebrained and complacent. Like a tortoise, a
firm needs to be slow and steady but cannot afford to be shell-shocked and
cocooned in the face of competition. A hare can modify its emotional behavior
to that of a tortoise but a tortoise would find it difficult to be physically
capable as a hare. A combination that has the physical prowess and agility of a
hare (with none of its randomness) and the emotional steadiness of a tortoise
(with little of its laziness) could be a wise combination.
Wisdom in a corporate sense is difficult but
not impossible to define and practice. The famous philosopher Aristotle called
wisdom the master virtue. He defined it as ‘figuring out the right way to do
the right thing in a particular circumstance, with a particular person at a
particular time’. The Bhagavad Gita, India’s Hindu religious theological treatise,
says that wise leaders understand how to balance the extremes and act from a
state of equanimity. The Gita also imbues wisdom to tortoise saying ‘just as a
tortoise draws in its limbs, the wise can draw their senses in at will’. Wisdom
requires a firm and a leader to be smart on five dimensions in which its
organization is anchored. These are people, function, region, product and business.
A wise leader is people-smart, function-smart, region-smart, product-smart and
business-smart. These five dimensions of smartness cannot be delegated to other
leaders; instead they must be an integral part of wise leadership.
‘Hartoise’, a professional sine qua non
It may be an oxymoron to say that hare and
tortoise can coexist as one being. However, from a professional viewpoint, the
good points of both the animals need to be assimilated and the unhelpful points
eschewed as part of wise leadership. As a hare, a leader or a firm needs to be
fast, nimble and quick on the uptake. At the same time, unlike a hare, they can
ill afford to be harebrained and random. As a tortoise, a leader or a firm
needs to be shock-proof and competition-proof. At the same time, unlike a
tortoise, they can ill afford to be withdrawn and meditative when action is
required. Like hare and tortoise, the
leader and the firm need to be alert to predatory competition but unlike a hare
they should not be running away from competition; rather like a tortoise, they
should be having a protective shell against competition. The protective shell
is typically made up of perfection in products and processes as much as in
people and culture.
Planning in a slow and steady fashion like a
tortoise, and executing on a predetermined path like a hare could be a wise
characteristic of a 'hartoise'. Reflection on every situation, inflexion at every
challenge and acceleration at every opportunity helps leaders and firms to be
fast, smart and wise in the totality. The foundation for wise leadership is
contextual sensitivity. It appreciates that fastness and smartness have their
utility but also have their limits too. Understanding, reflecting and
leveraging on the challenges and opportunities that people, functions, regions,
products and businesses offer and responding appropriately either as a hare
with speed and focus, or as a tortoise with poise and smartness would be a
touchstone of wise leadership. Fast and smart or slow and steady as required
would be the right ‘hare as tortoise’ analogy for leaders and firms targeting
sustainable success.
Posted by Dr CB Rao on January 5, 2014
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