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If you are innovative and creative in life, your creative energy/approach will help you to find solution than problems.  This is the message the ‘long tongue’ of the giraffe conveys to the corporate man. 

Evolution has favoured the giraffe with long neck.  With the help of the long neck, the animal can eat the leaves from tall branches of trees.  To fetch the leaves easily, the nature also has helped the giraffe with long tongue.  The ‘lengthy tongue’ help the animal to grasp the leaves, bend the small branches etc.  Essentially all these advantages are for the successful survival giraffe in its ecosystem.  Interestingly the giraffe uses its long tongue even to clean its ears. 

Giraffe is the only animal that has the capability to use its tongue beyond its brief as it has long tongue.  The debate is not the long tongue of giraffe. 

Its intelligence in using the tongue for cleaning the ears is what one need to appreciate.  It knows it has a long tongue and it also knows that the same can be used for cleaning the ears as well. 

It is not having an advantage bring success, knowing the advantage and knowing how it can be used in a given situation is only called intelligence and intelligence alone will help one to find success.  Chameleons and frogs also have long tongue.  But they never seem to use their tongue for any other purpose other than catching the prey. 

The message of the article is not about giraffe or how intelligent a giraffe is over a chameleon or a frog.  Because it uses its tongue to clean the ears, no one can call giraffe as intelligent also. 

Giraffe perhaps would have made effort to use its tongue beyond its definition and the same effort, the chameleon and frog would not have made.  The effort only has helped the giraffe. The point is not just about the effort, but one also must be creative. 

Being creative is not necessarily mean doing things differently, knowing different things is also par of being creative. 

Look at the simple examples in nature and learn from it.  If you just gaze at a giraffe, you can learn a great management lesson.  To see, learn and to interpret also one need creativity/innovativeness and not just knowledge or experience.  

Many corporate employees take ‘pomp and pride’ out of their ‘donkey years’ of corporate experience and knowledge (trick of the trade).  Unless the fire of creativity/innovativeness ignites their knowledge and experience, they continue singing their valueless glory within themselves.         

It is not the limitation one should see but the probabilities and possibilities out of such limitations is what one should explore in life.  Problems of the corporate employees are not due to the lack of experience or knowledge, but they seldom approach issues creatively.  

Let the long tongue of giraffe remind you of how to be creative in your corporate life.

Ref: Management book – Jungle wisdom for corporate management – lessons from university of nature by Swami Sukhabodhananda and Dr S Ranganathan

Dr S Ranganathan, ClinRise Derma Pvt., Ltd.