HR message of Giraffe neck

Although the neck of a giraffe is very long but the long neck is interestingly made up of only seven neck bones that are as same as the number of neck bones of human beings. Does this convey any management message to the corporate world? Certainly, the corporate leaders have a lot to learn from the anatomy of giraffe’s neck.

The length of the neck of a giraffe is recorded to be 2 meters or 6 – 7 feet. However, only 7 bones were involved in the making of such a long neck of a giraffe. The short neck of a human being is also comprised of 7 bones. The wisdom perhaps nature has used in creating the long neck of giraffe lies not in mere numbers or consumption of abundant resources but in how to make wonders with limited resources.

Most corporate people in general believe and perpetuate the philosophy that if they incur more the expense, more the returns would happen. The marketing and sales people would repeatedly argue that the company must invest heavy money in advertisement, brand building, and other activities and only then they can compete and grow the business. The R&D ‘scientists’ on the other hand would say that only the best infrastructure in the R&D would allow them to invent and discover many new things.

Always they associate their performance and capability with greater resources that are available in the corporate. Even to think, they need some infrastructure and facility.

Look at the marvel of nature. The six feet long giraffe neck has only seven bones as same as a human. How with just seven bones, nature would have made the neck of a giraffe so long. The ‘possibility thinking and self-belief’ of nature only have made such ‘marvel’ possible.

Instead of adding more number of bones to make the neck of the giraffe long, whether, each neck bones can be made to ‘stretch beyond’ so that a wonder is possible was the management question, nature had answered through the long neck of a giraffe. This approach is what the most corporate requires today.

This is possible only through the process of empowering and enabling people and making them go beyond the brief. In essence, the corporate should engage in transforming ‘employees’ to ‘leaders/co-owners’. But unfortunately, the most corporate compels their employees to stick to their job definition and perform within the matrix. Both the employee and the employer must believe ‘each other’ and the ‘self’ to make‘wonderment’.

Nature had believed that just with 7 bones, a 6 feet long neck is possible to make. The bones also developed enough strength (credibility) in the course of time to prove that they definitely contribute to such ‘incredible challenge’.

Every events and occurrence in nature have a deep message to convey. Only the agog and receptiveness people in the corporate makes one see the ‘unseen’ management insight from various events in nature.

The corporate people instead of being always inside the ‘excel sheet’ workings, must visit and be with nature to learn the ‘totality and completeness’ of the corporate governance and people management.

Dr. S Ranganathan