If you think you have time... check with bats

Bats are essentially the nocturnal flying mammals distributed throughout the world. It means, during day, they reside/roost in caves, trees in some lone areas or in some isolated and abandoned old buildings/bungalow etc. The above details are well known to all of us.

If we carefully search/study the nocturnal behaviour of bats, we can learn a fantastic management message that the bats are although nocturnal animals, but do choose right time within the night for foraging. They are not busy through out night.

Unless the objective/task and the timing of ones effort are well understood, no amount of efforts would bring success or result. Blaming the effort or fate will never help one to get the objectives achieved.

The Noctule, a species of bat that prevalent in Europe is one such wonderful example. This bat is known to hunt small birds and birds only constitute greater proportion of their feed.

Most of the birds are diurnal i.e., active during the day. So finding and hunting birds during night hours is not possible for Noctule bats. It appears, the Noctule bats have learned the art and science very well. They start searching for prey just before sunset and never wait for the day to retire and night to begin. Towards sunset, birds would generally move towards their roosting site to hide and protect them during night.

The smart Noctule appeared to have learned the art that catching birds before sunset will be far easier than searching them in dead night. Hence they wake up early (during sunset) than extending or prolonging their sleep a little more.

Knowing the timing to invest ones effort is therefore essential to achieve success. Imagine, the whole of night Noctule bats can forage. If they had ever followed the above philosophy, they might go foolish. In true sense, the bats are nocturnal and hence the whole of night they can search their food.

But for Notule, birds are their primary prey. Hence even if the whole of night they search the prey also, they may not get a single bird to hunt as most birds are diurnal. Hence, instead being late to wake up by stretching the sleep longer, the Noctule bats wisely get up early during sunset and become successful.

The message to be learned by people in corporate is that be early than be late. You may have plenty of time to complete the task but still never take advantage of time. Understand the objectives and link it up with right time, only then your effort will grant you success. Every one has to calibrate the ‘objective-time- effort’ to achieve success.

How wisely the Noctule bats have understood the above management principle of ‘objective-time- effort’ and that is how it finds great success as bird hunter bat.

It is not just with effort or having a meaningful objective one can find success, but only by knowing it well and linking it up with right time will make our effort result centric.

Dr S Ranganathan, ClinRise Derma Pvt., Ltd., Chennai

Desire, Dream and Destination – Social Entrepreneur Forum