Cuckoo and Crow Affair in Corporate – Dear HR Introspect

Cuckoo, a very common bird in the garden, most of us would have seen. Cuckoo represents two important aspects of our HR learning such as learn something to follow and learn something not to follow in corporate life.

The young nestlings of a cuckoo, when opens their eyes, sees only the crow mother feeding them so affectionately. All they suppose to know and accept in real sense is the crow as their true mother. They have no chance of knowing anything other than crow in their early life. Without crow, they would not have even hatched out of the egg.

The day the baby cuckoo grows as fledgling and able to move, make sound and attempt to fly, the crow realizes it to be as baby cuckoo. As a result of the above, the baby cuckoo is chased away by crow or it escapes by itself. No regard or gratitude is shown back to the crow by the baby cuckoo. How the crow spontaneously changes its motherly affection to a historic rivalry or unstoppable haltered towards the baby cuckoo?

What is so much to learn from the above event that is happening very common in nature? Why the learning is so relevant to the corporate?

Why neither the crow is true in its motherly affection it was showering on baby cuckoo (until the crow become aware of the fact that it was a baby cuckoo) nor baby cuckoo, grateful or even thankful to the crow mother who took care of it so well until it become self reliant or self supportive?

The bitter truth is that a crow is a crow and a cuckoo is a cuckoo. Crow lives for crow and cuckoo lives for cuckoo.

It is the mystery of nature that cuckoo played the role of ‘baby crow’ for sometime and crow played the role of ‘cuckoo’s mother’ for a short while. Both of them were sincere in their role when then were playing. Once the role scripted for them got over, they become two separate species with two distinct purpose and meaning for their life.

This is how the life of employee and the culture of most corporate are. As long as the employee is working for/working with the organization, he or she is treated as an asset. So shall the description of the employees about the organization. They describe the organization to be the best place on earth, it is a paradise etc. The descriptions of some of the inefficient employees about the organization can easily beat the veneration of all passionate teenagers’ about their lovers. Once they decided to move to another organization, the employees would be described by the organization as worst and irresponsible and vice versa.

So naturally, both the employees and the corporate convert their love energy to hate energy. Asset becomes a liability and the paradise becomes a desert and so dirty.

Are we not following the culture of crow and cuckoo in corporate? Crow has the reason to get angry with the baby cuckoo as she was jilted by cuckoo’s mother. Cuckoo has a reason not to wait and thank the crow as all of a sudden the affectionate mother has become very devilish and ferocious, so it has to escape.

Does this situation exist in corporate? Why employee who wishes to leave the organization should be hated so badly? Why the employee should hate the organization he or she was working so long, so suddenly? Introspection is necessary on both sides. Let the learning flow from crow and cuckoo.
Dr S Ranganathan