Right people for right job – HR wisdom of Termite

If you have the right people for right job, you can do many things in the corporate world. This is not just a mere saying but is indeed a gospel truth. The question is who the right person is and how to identify such right person. Whether the importance of right person for right job is well understood by the corporate or not, but some of the tiny insects in the nature have understood the above management truth and are following the above doctrine in nature are extremely successful also. They have some finest message to share for the corporate.

We all know that termites can cause great damage to mankind. They destroy all the wood works, papers and even the buildings. The interesting fact is that termites cannot digest the wood or papers that they eat. How an insect that can survive in nature by eating something that it cannot digest??? It may appear very strange and shocking.

The evolution has helped the termites to employ certain group of protista such as Trichonympha to do the job of cellulose digestion. Termites bite and swallow the wood pieces or paper voraciously and the Trichonympha digest the same in the gut of the termites and convert them as food to its host. These protista live in the gut of termites.

Without protista in the gut of the termites, these insects cannot eat the wood or paper. The message to be drawn by the corporate from the above is that only right people can bring success. Only when the corporate employs the right people for the right job, execution excellence can be achieved. How evolution has enabled the termite to do so in nature.

Another important message the corporate has to infer from the above is that what appears to be an impossible wish/objective/task for the corporate becomes easy if right people are employed.

Corporate employees also need to learn their big lesson from the above. Have a right subordinate for the right job. Any big commitment the boss would have made to the top management can be easily achieved or done, if the right subordinate is engaged for the job.

The gastronomic delight from the insect world has lot to offer to the corporate. No insect in nature is as powerful as the termites in eating the wood. Interestingly the insect that eat the wood cannot digest the very food it eats without the help of protista.

If the corporate engage right people for the right job, success would blossom like the success of termites that eats woods aggressively without the ability to digest the same. If the choice of employer were not right, the result would be disease like, how one would be when pathogens enter the system.

Dr S Ranganathan