The Hindu Business Line : Management lessons from the garden

Management consultants like me have been taking leaves out of other people’s books and transplanting them into organisations. Getting away and climbing rocks, rappelling and engaging in many such activities are turned into training programmes that are a fun way of learning. Closer home, you will find that gardens and good gardeners are an excellent resource for learning how to grow. An almost universal occupation, even when people have no access to land, they try to grow a pot of something green or at least visit a park. Below are some lessons that I have learnt from the humble mali whose plotting and planning, and more importantly, plodding, add beauty and greenery to our surroundings.

Narrative techniques

Gardeners are invariably good at narrative. Anyone who has been shown around someone’s sad autumnal garden and been given a full description of the glory of the borders in the summer, would testify to this. It is much easier to demonstrate a technique with a real-life example than by trying to explain by means of the written word. Narrative techniques have the added benefit of instant participation — more satisfying than blogging or mailing. The Munnabhai story did more to illustrate Gandhism than all the scholarly books and documentaries could ever do. That is a testament to the power of the narrative.

Plan and identify

Plan the layout and infrastructure required. Get a place that is bigger than what you need for the present. Get sturdy, long lasting, low maintenance plant and machinery. You can initially rent a place while you nurse the first lot of people who work with you. Like saplings, they can be put close together. But remember that they will soon need a lot more space and if that is not given, the saplings will die an early death.

Identify the components for your organisation just like a gardener would decide on the type of plants — small or large border plants. Just like you need hedge plants, flowers, shrubs, trees and some grass, you need different skill sets. The people you get need to fulfil diverse roles. Prepare the environment with the right ingredients. A ‘serial problem solver’ may well be a working definition of a manager. Time and thought put in at this time will yield great returns and reduce the chances of failure.

Prepare

Prepare the environment, but don’t push too much. One needs to provide the right raw materials such as good soil, manure, adequate water, sunlight, and so on, in order to nurture. At the same time, don’t force the pace by putting too much manure or water, or by trimming too much, expecting the plants to grow faster.

We raised some balsam from seeds last spring and I was excited to see them rise from the dirt to form beautiful green leaves. These leaves grew and eventually gave way to a second set of leaves. Apparently, it’s about this time that the seedlings should be transplanted from the seed-raising trays to a garden bed. However, as I learnt the hard way, the garden bed still needs to be a safe environment for plants that are not fully mature. I transplanted my young seedlings into a garden bed at the back of my house that gets sunlight pretty much all day. In spite of the glorious sunshine, my poor little balsams dried up. No matter how much water I poured, the little ones just kept dying. This is an example to warn against pushing in too many resources in the hope of speeding up results.

Regular damage control

Do remove the weeds. But also remember the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, “What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” Plants grow, so one needs to check their progress regularly. Be prepared for unforeseen calamities.

Good managers like gardeners and farmers, are ultimately people who enjoy growing things.

The renaissance scholar Montaigne said, “I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.” Put aside the manuals and scholarly books. Give your new recruits and the old hands their own small patch to take care (if space is at a premium, give them a couple of planters) and guide them on these basic rules for a green thumb.

(The writer, an alumnus of XLRI, is a freelance HR consultant and trainer.)

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