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As watchful and as alert as you are in the corporate, so shall be your success and rewards. The above statement emphasizes the importance of how one has to be very vigilant, watchful and alert in the corporate to be very successful. But, how true is the above statement? The ‘true’ meaning of the above statement depends largely upon the definition of the word success by the people in the corporate.

In the corporate world, in general, ‘people managers’ are respected more than the ‘task managers’. This culture is well pronounced in the corporate that are governed by ‘one up man ship’ or in other words, ‘single man’s corporate’.

The core activity of the people managers are watching the activities of others and reporting to the top management on a regular basis. These ‘people managers’ are trained and ‘paid well’ to be very watchful, vigilant and alert about others work.

When someone is trained to be very watchful of others, are they also equally trained to how to watch themselves?

Look at the animal world. Lion will be always watchful and vigilant of its prey animals in the jungle. Only when the lion or other carnivores are watchful and alert, they can survive. Their life and existence depends on how alert and watchful they are in finding a prey animal.

So are the prey animals like deer or a buffalo. They are also very vigilant and watchful about their predators in their habitat. Unless they are very sharp and sensitive in watching their threat, they cannot survive. They have the fairest justifications for being watchful and alert. Only by being watchful, they can live their life.

What about the people managers in the corporate world. They fail to live and fail to do anything by watching the life of other people and what others are doing.

Whole of their life in the corporate, they will be watching and watching about what others are doing and nothing else. They are tuned to ‘watch’ only others and not about themselves. To live, one also needs to be alert and vigilant about oneself.

Answer to the question of why most corporate employees fail to live a life blissfully and happily is because of their lack of ability to watch their own life. This cardinal essence of life, every corporate employee must know.

Animals are always watchful and vigilant in the jungle and only by being watchful, they live their life. The life of every animal in the jungle begins and ends in the matrix of ‘ingestion, digestion & excretion and finally the procreation.

Animals generally see no other meaning beyond this. From this point of view, they sufficiently justify a life that is filled with nothing other than watchfulness.

Is the corporate man also uses the same matrix of the animals for defining his life. Is the definition his success lays in guarding and supporting the same ‘matrix’? Then, he is right by being always watching others in the corporate than himself. Certainly he is right in proving to his top management, how alert and watchful he is on others.

Remember the fact that the payment you receive in the corporate is for living your life happily and healthily. By watching others and without watching oneself, no one can live a life with meaning and bliss. This is what the corporate man has to learn from the animal world.

Dr S Ranganathan, ClinRise Derma Pvt., Ltd.

Learn more from the management book – ‘Jungle wisdom for corporate management – lessons from the university of nature’ by Swami Sukhabodhananda and Dr S Ranganathan