Management Lessons from Panchatantra - 1

1. THE STORY OF THE MONKEY AND THE LOG

A merchant had started building a temple beneath the trees on the outskirts of a town.

Every day the carpenters and the workmen used to go into the town for their midday meals.

Now, one particular day, a troop of wandering monkeys arrived on the scene.

One of the carpenters who was in the middle of sawing a log, put a wedge in it, to prevent the log from closing up, and then went off.

The monkeys started playing on the tops of the trees and the high structures, without a care in the world.

One poor monkey, not destined to live long, sat down on the half split log, put his legs in the gap, caught hold of the wedge with his hands and started pulling it out.

And behold! The wedge came out all of a sudden and the log closed in. The monkey's legs which were in the gap of the log got trapped.

He was instantly killed.

The wise indeed say: One, who interferes in other's work, surely comes to grief.

Management Lessons: 

This story is a case study on leadership and team work.  It often happens that the colleagues and managers get involved and participate in the work and try to control the work from the experts.   The carpenters and the workmen are the experts and the monkey in this case is like a manager.  The experts have taken a break to relax and review the work (gone for lunch), a monkey from high and mighty place comes down to inspect the work and finds out the work has been stopped.  It wants to inspect the quality of work in progress and disturbs the wedge kept to mark the work in progress.  

The work is disturbed and the managers also ensures that the work is disrupted like the monkey in the above story.  

Lesson:  

1. Do not get involved with technical work where you lack expertise.  

2. Do not review work without the concerned experts presence

3. How and mighty you are, ignorance in business is not a bliss and may result in losing the job.