Strong or weak contributes the best to corporate? HR message from plants

Every corporate must understand who, the ‘weak’ or the ‘strong’ employees contribute the best to the organization? Many may say without even having the least doubt that only the strong employees could contribute the best to the corporate as people largely believe that weak employees are weak in their contributions as well.

Unless the definition of ‘weak’ and ‘contribution’ are defined and understood from the management per se the very scope of the discussion may fall into the wrong premises and can also draw wrong messages while reading the article.

Understand the definition of the above terms from the biological point of view. The role of plants in the ecosystem is to produce food as ‘primary producers’ as plants alone can perform the process of photosynthesis. The result of photosynthesis is useful only to the primary consumers. If it is not serving the need of the primary consumer in any given ecosystem the plants cannot be called as the ‘contributors’ as per the primary definition although they may do photosynthesis. Of course some plants may form as a host to many insects that parasitize on these plants. However, some of these plants may not be offering any great food value to vast majority of ‘herbivores’.

Whereas, some plants, do photosynthesis and contributes to the food need of many animals. But such plants are generally weak in nature. From the biological point of view, the contribution refers only to ‘food value’ of the primary producers to the primary consumers.

What needs to be understood is the definition of ‘weak’ from biological perspective. Weak refers to the plants that are annuals, monocots, climbers and creepers, plants that cannot grow to great height and breadth etc., All cereals, millets, generally the fruit plants like grapes, strawberries, leeches, most of the vegetables and all the legumes fall under this category. The strong plants represent rose wood, teak, sal wood, red wood etc. All though these plants are strong, but do not have any direct and immediate food value to most of the primary consumers.

The above statement does not exclude the possibility of food value of some strong plants and least to no food value of some weak plants as well. The definition is bit general, covers larger scope of possibilities and includes especially what is so obvious in nature.

In the present context, the contributions have been defined from the biological point of view. Plants are the primary producers and hence only when a plant meets its primary producer role to the primary consumers are considered as contributors in nature.

What the corporate has to draw from the above is that performance assessment should not be done based on the definition of ‘weak’ or ‘strong’. It should be done strictly based on the definition of ‘contribution’ as contribution alone will make the difference.

Define the term contribution with reference its primary utility value than some secondary or tertiary uses and do not bring the role of strong or weak vis-à-vis performance.