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
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