Magic Apple Tree and Managing Leadership

A talented farmer who has a small land in a little mountain and he planted few apple trees in the downstream of his garden. As a hard worker, he put a lot of effort to take care of those apple trees and they started responding with sweet apples in few years. One of those apple trees was so special and it gave more apples with special taste which brought uniqueness in his garden. After couple of harvesting, farmer identified the uniqueness and he understood that it was the Magic Apple Tree. Farmer started to take extra care to the Magic Apple Tree and started to plant its seeds in the rest of the place of his garden. He was in the hope that newly planted apple seeds would be growing as Magic Apple Trees.

In this story, everything was positive and good to read. Really!!! Ok, what would happen if the farmer was imprudent? I repeat this story for this case.

A talented farmer who has a small land in a little mountain and he planted few apple trees in the downstream. As a hard worker, he put a lot of effort to take care of those apple trees and they started responding with sweet apples in few years. One of those apple trees was so special and it gave more apples with special taste which brought uniqueness in his garden. After couple of harvesting, farmer identified the uniqueness and he understood that it was the Magic Apple Tree. Farmer decided to plant its seeds in the rest of the place of his garden by hoping that newly planted apple seeds would be growing as Magic Apple Trees instead of taking extra care to the Magic Apple Tree for the future harvesting. Moreover, Farmer decided to cut down the Magic Apple Tree and other grown apple trees to create space for planting Magic Apple Tree seeds.

Greedier! No Gratefulness! It is not required now to go into the emotional thoughts rather we must think about how many times we did that in our life. Not as a farmer, we can relate this story with our social life and professional life. Until getting benefits, we take care of our family members & friends and we used to cut down once our motive is achieved without thinking about future. It may work and bring success in our motive but it will never fulfill your soul.

What’s happening in our professional life? Few organizations will never cut their long term serviced employees for the sake of cost and process because they value their service and effort. Many organizations, cut down their experienced employees by thinking that they would be able to achieve the goal from their team members or others. Yes! An experienced employee who has never created dependencies in his routine professional life, it is 100% possible. If the experienced employee who has created his dependency in his daily activities, management cannot replace his position but if still management wants to take decision, yes, they can do but it will take additional time and effort to operate without his dependency.

Points to be considered are

• Did the farmer value the Magic Tree?
• Have all planted seeds grown as Magic Apple Trees?
• Was cutting down of Magic Apple Tree good to his garden?
• Is this right decision to cut down all trees and planting Magic Tree seeds?
• What would happen if none of the Magic Tree seeds start growing?
• Does it make sense if the farmer value the Magic Tree once it was cut down?

I would like to conclude this article with this final question. “Hoping for the Best or Going with Evidence”, which one makes the organization stronger and better?

- Amalan Nagarajan

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