When you take pride on your intelligence...

When you take pride and pomp on your unique adaptation/ability to fool or outsmart or camouflage your boss and subordinates, never forget to respect the intelligence of others for your success. The unique adaptation of leafy sea dragon only conveys such management message to corporate.

Look at the amazing adaptation of leafy sea dragon. As the name sounds, the dragon would look exactly like seaweed or kelp, both in its appearance, shape and colour. The animal can therefore effectively camouflage from both its predators and prey.

But the big question is how the unique seaweed like adaptation of leafy sea dragon would give protection to the animal from many seaweed and kelp eating herbivorous animals?

By mistake, won’t the herbivorous animals attempt to eat leafy sea dragon as seaweed or kelp? Unlike seaweed or kelp, the leafy sea dragon can move from one place to other. Besides that the herbivorous animals are intelligent, so choosy and their instinct is so strong. They would not likely to eat anything and everything that looks like plant. Therefore, the leafy sea dragon is safe from herbivores.

The message is that when you attempt fool/outsmart someone through your smartness you also must respect the intelligence of some others. Remember, your success cannot be absolutely due to your adaptation/uniqueness.

Look at the beauty of biology. It is fair and at the same time it had never failed to show its ‘street smartness’ as well.

The message to be learned by people in corporate is that never look for any strategy that would offer you absolute success. Every strategy, knowledge, skill etc., can only offer you limited success and remember that your success also come from the intelligence of others. Both the stupidity of someone and the intelligence of others contribute to your success.

Imagine, if the kelp and seaweed eating animals does not have any instinct and intelligence to differentiate leafy sea dragon from seaweed and eat anything that look and appear like seaweed and kelp, the unique adaptation of leafy sea dragon would have made it to be more vulnerable than anyway useful to them.

Adaptation is like a mixed bag. The management message is that when you develop certain skills/tricks to deal your boss, remember all such extra smart approaches will have only limited value and it cannot give you overall protection. When your smartness help you to fool someone, remember, someone is showing grace to you because they are wise and intelligent. Therefore learn to respect the intelligence of others when you boast yours.

Dr S Ranganathan, ClinRise Derma Pvt., Ltd., Chennai Desire, Dream and Destination – Social Entrepreneur Forum