Lessons on Flexibility: Observing Plants and their Reponses

My interest in plants started in January 2021 and since then I have been watching them for few minutes every day and is so refreshing an activity to see them grow and see some flowers bloom. Discussed below is something I learned during the past few months of observing the potted plants.

Closely look at the three pictures below

The tub holding the plants was kept near the balcony grill. I observed that it grew in a manner such that the leaves were pointing face upwards and towards the open and bright direction of the balcony.  This was helping the leaves to get exposed and best absorb the sunlight to produce the required nutrients as part of their respiration (photosynthesis) process.

Day1:  I turned the tub by 180 degrees and lo, all the leaves were positioned towards the darker side of the balcony with their face inwards rather than towards the sunlight. Immediately some alerts would have been triggered in the plant's internal sensory mechanism that told them that the light was lesser than needed.  We need to do something.

Day2:  It can be seen within 24 hours or so the stems were bent towards the sun and the face of the leaves in some cases even turned direction. Notice closely that except fr the lowest hanging stems, the others even twisted to enable the leaves to get maximum exposure to the sunlight. 

Day4: By the time it was day 4 or less than about 100 hours almost all leaves had their face pointing towards the bright side of the balcony so that their respiratory process was not inhibited as it would be if they were facing the darker inward side of the balcony. 

The race towards survival was possible only because the stems were flexible and could easily curl towards the opposite side and help the leaves face the bright sunny side with ease.   See the pictures of how flexible the stem was and you can clearly see the bend. 

Imagine for a moment that the stem was rigid.   What would have happened? How would the plant have survived if this sudden twist by  180 degrees was made as shown on Day 1?   It would have been impossible to achieve a dramatic shift in less than four days and very difficult for the plant to have survived without the kind of quick sensitive response.  The leaves would have perhaps wilted away and eventually shed and plant life would have been affected.  This is what I had observed in another plant with a rigid stem that was moved to a less bright part of the balcony some weeks before. 

There are few lessons for us to learn from this simple observation of how a plant tries to survive when faced with an adverse (in the case of the plant it was turning away from light by 180 degrees)  condition in our life.  If we need to confront any tough situations we need to adapt according to the need and it's true many a time.  Unless we are flexible (in the change of attitude or outlook)  it would be difficult t adapt.  If hold our horses and don't allow a change of attitude or outlook it would prevent course correction or shifting of tracks that may be much needed to overcome a difficulty or challenge.

Often managers and leaders need to consider changing their management style to suit the situation. Also, when change is at times sudden and drastic, the response has to be fast and immediate (less the less than 100 hours to change in our observation of the plant) else there would damage done due to delay.

When I speak to some of the managers and leaders who had derailments in their careers it turns out that their failure to change was the root cause. 

Expecting change and maneuvering would be better than being caught unawares, and then facing some tough consequences.  All these raise a few questions on what is the difference between reacting to change and responding to change, and of course between anticipatory response and reactive response and ways and means to be flexible and respond smartly to situations demanding change.  I will address these in subsequent posts.

Meanwhile, enjoy the below blogs on a contemporary topic gaining importance in these days of the pandemic with fears of millions of job losses.  Both blog posts below were written a couple of years back and address these points very pertinently.

Decluttering the Hype Around Job Losses

Job Shifts: The Road Ahead

Automation Tiger: Reality Or Hype

On Being Relevant as a Manager !!

The Oxford Dictionaries defines relevant as "closely connected or appropriate to the matter in hand".

So what does it mean when it comes to a manager engaging with his / her team in work organizations?

If you are to be accepted as a leader manager you have to be relevant in today's context. The expectations, needs, desires and general view of life changes with generations.   Today's young people at work in their early twenties may never  realize that work was once done without email,  without digital systems, with type writers,  with ammonia duplication machines.  There were no scanners, no internet and also fewer cars on the road to the workplace.  Majority of companies did not provide a pick up and drop facility from and to office / workplace  in earlier decade.

This whole digital age, when things are done at the click of a mouse or on pressing ENTER on a key board has resulted in a expectation osmosis towards forming a more generalized view for everything to happen even at work in a jiffy, therefore the need for quick resolution, quick feedback, instant gratification and so on.   Which means that managers need to be fast in all of these aspects- giving feedback,  providing responses, decision making and so on. 

The new generation of employees are tuned to their mobiles all of the time,  familiar with digital technology and more comfortable if there is a reciprocal response from managers. While a manager may ask "Why should I be the one to change"  the simple response is today you as a manager may be in a minority in organizations as there are several companies with over 50% Gen Y employees.   World wide the workforce may have about 36% of millennial generation in the workforce but in countries like India it is higher and in some sectors like the IT/ ITeS it is much higher.  Remember the old saying  :  "While in Rome, do as the Roman's Do." 

Today is the age of fast and not so lasting change, people expect and are so used to change happening all of the time so it is important for managers to also change and reinvent themselves.  You can always lean back on the fact that "It always happened this way.... here"  but not for long as your team will find their managers are not relevant.  Meetings and the way they are organized should keep changing now and then otherwise they become drab, boring, seen that before kind of rituals.

Today you can send and receive as many emails back and forth in a single day to close your communication... so more frequent connects are the order of the day when it comes to work. Which means you need to connect back with your teams more often than what you did in the past decade.  In short influences on the social side of personal lives need to spill over into the workplace.

Adopt latest technologies,  speed up things even in people management, bring more variety and flavors in your meetings,  connect more often, give more feedback,  get more frequently into connect session with your team(s) and keep giving them a thumbs up for good things happening every now and then.