Why some corporate make its employees Aardvark???

Aardvarks are the only anteaters that have teeth. Why these animals have teeth when they prefer to live with small ants and termites as their food. To catch or cut the ants and termites, does these animals require teeth? Other group of the anteaters does not have teeth. The relationship between why the Aardvarks have teeth and why still they eat ants and termites as their major food must be understood truly from the corporate perspective because most corporate do harbor Aardvarks unknowingly.

The teeth of Aardvarks do not known to play any role in catching or cutting its most preferred food – the ants and termites. To rarely eat some fruits to meet its water need, the teeth may be helpful to the animal. But they prefer fruits only rarely. The animal is also known to dig burrows to reside and hide inside. Even to dig such long burrows, the teeth are not used by the animal.

The exact answer for why Aardvarks have teeth while they prefer to eat ants and termites is difficult to establish or define. Many people in the corporate will have vast variety of expertise, knowledge and experiences but still they might have been engaged in different types of job in corporate which may be either insignificant or may be different from their competency. The corporate also would engage them to do some kind of odd jobs that are not linked to their expertise or experience.

Unless the corporate and its HR understand this distance, engaging, enabling and empowering people may not happen in the right manner. With teeth, one would assume that the Aardvarks to eat something that the teeth also are put into use. But they prefer tiny ants and termites and catch them with their sticky tongue and swallows. The teeth are used the least.

Similarly, the right people with adequate knowledge are rarely used for right job and in most occasions they are pushed to do mostly the job that are totally outside the premises of their core competency. In due course, these people become ‘Aardvarks’ by despite having adequate knowledge and experience, never able to ‘put’ such qualities to use.

Perhaps the Aardvarks would have used its teeth either to catch or eat the food when it was evolved. In the course of evolution, may be due to competition for food or lack of food availability, the animal would have become strict ant and termite eater. By reverting to such life style, the animal would have found its survival easy than using its teeth. Survival need always known to outscore the need to use any organ in the body. Naturally, the Aardvarks would have forgotten about the use of its teeth or how to use them, in the course of time.

Many people in the corporate also do exist in the same way as Aardvarks. It is for the HR and the corporate to identify such talented people and engage them in the right way. Only by identifying and ‘using’ the Aardvarks in the corporate, the corporate can grow from strength to strength.

Dr S Ranganathan