Do not be like Hag fish in corporate – A HR message

The people in most corporate always develop or inculcate and employ different strategies/techniques to defend and different situations. Like dealing the superiors/bosses, the peer group or from other functions etc. When things go wrong, instead of diagnosing the reason for failure, often most corporate leaders and people hunt for scapegoats to escape. If the cause of failure is ever discovered/identified the problem can be solved easily and once for all. But the corporate leaders, in general, don’t work that way. Only the fear prohibits people from understanding the reasons and instead they tend to shift the blame on someone. If one delay in identifying the scapegoat, others might make him/her as the possible scapegoat. Because of this reason, people always look for scapegoats than knowing the reasons.

In order to avoid themselves getting identified as a scapegoat, people always develop different defense methods. But sometimes the own defense methods can put them in deep trouble than others in the corporate. Therefore, one has to be careful about own defense strategies while defending oneself from ‘enemies’.

Nature has the finest example for the corporate man to learn from a marine animal called Hagfish. Hagfish, otherwise called ‘slime eel’ is a marine animal that lives in the Pacific Ocean. The hagfish, when threatened or attacked, releases/exudes a slimy substance from its body. The slimy substance quickly reacts with water and become a gluey gel. In most instances, the gel covers the face and body of most of its predators. The predators will find it hard to move or breath and hence they run to own safety. Naturally they would leave the hagfish free.

Most of the time, the same slimy substance would entrap and encapsulate the hagfish as the slime never recognize differently the hagfish from its predator. Unless the hagfish show some level of intelligence, it might get trapped. The defense mechanism of the hagfish i.e. the slime production would indeed defend the animal but can put them into deep trouble also. If the hagfish ever assume overconfidence about its defense mechanism, it might land up trouble and that can be as bad as predation.

The management message is that have smartness even when you operate a right strategy. Generally, the right strategy will not go wrong. But it is only in relation to its purpose. Beyond its scope, it can pose some problem. One has to be smart to understand and escape from it under such situations.

The slime exuded by the hagfish although may defend the animal, but there is also an equal chance of the animal gets entrapped in the same slime and hence it should know how to avoid or free from it.

It does not mean the defense strategy is wrong. Being unwise with such strategies only can pose a problem. Hence adequate understanding is inevitable.

The people in corporate must develop capabilities and also must understand such capabilities beyond the level it has to be understood. Otherwise, the self-defense can although help one to defend the ‘self’ from others and simultaneously can make the ‘self’ defenseless to it.

Dr. S Ranganathan