Who is the best liar - the employee or CEO? A HR message

Who can be the most capable liar in the corporate – the CEOs or the employees in the lower cadre? People generally would say that the employees at the lower cadre lie more than the CEO’s. Is it true?

If HR studies and understand the creative intelligence of nature, it can easily find answers to the question of who is the big liar in the corporate world. How nature helps one to find out liars in the corporate world? It may appear strange and funny, but unless the truth is felt and experienced, the truth cannot be seen or understood.

Look at the camouflage diversity seen among different animals. There is different ways different animals camouflage by changing the colour or shape and appearance or sound etc.

Let us not get lost in the world of camouflage among animals but instead, shall understand the camouflage behaviour among

1. Predatory animals
2. Prey animals

Who the predatory animals or the prey animals camouflage the most? Nature has favoured both the group of animals with the same level of camouflaging power/ability and hence both the animals do engage in camouflage. The former group of animals does escape while the later group of animals to conceal the prey to hunt.

Until the predator reaches the prey at a striking distance, the predators would hide their identity/presence and use the technique of camouflage. Whereas the prey animals have to hide their presence to save a life, so they do camouflage.

From the point of view of biology, both the predator and prey animals ‘survive’ largely by employing the technique of camouflage. Camouflage trait is seen in an animal world only manifests in the form of ‘lie’ in the corporate world.

Both the employees at the bottom and CEO’s at the top of the corporate pyramid are good liars and are born liars.

There is no method or technique to measure who is the biggest liar, the employees or the CEO’s. The interesting twist is that the people at the bottom of the pyramid tell ‘lie’ only to people at the top whereas the people at the top tell lie both to the people at the bottom (within the organization) as well as to the world at large.

If we look at the ‘intensity’, ‘propensity’ and ‘innocence’ of the lie, the lies of CEO’s and top management people are largely filled with cunningness, treachery and brutal erosion of all values. Unless they convince others through lying, they cannot survive like how the survival of a predator depends only in killing the prey.

Whereas the lies of people at the bottom of the pyramid are largely survival oriented, naïve and are filled with helplessness and pity.

It means, the lie of CEO’s is meant only to disguise their strength. But the lies employees are to cover the weakness.

Man being a product of nature, only by learning from nature, he can perfect his conduct in corporate. A state of ‘perfection’, ‘serenity’ and ‘defect’ are engineered in all life forms in equal measure by nature.

No one is superior or inferior just due to their designation or the position in the corporate hierarchy; this is the message one need to learn from nature. When you suspect, suspect everyone and when you trust, trust everyone, this is how our approach should be.

Discrimination and difference should not be allowed in our judgment as it may affect us from seeing the truth as how it is. Never define the quality of people based on their designation.

Dr. S Ranganathan