Proverbs are ‘sayings’ rich in meaning and message, the great men in the past has left for posterity to learn and follow. By and large none of the proverbs has ever gone wrong in its meaning or the message. They neither grow old nor would they die with time; remain young, meaningful and relevant to all contexts of ‘space, time, and continuum’.
Indeed, some proverbs can go wrong in the corporate ecosystem. It may be amazing, but it is true. The proverb that has gone ‘terribly’ wrong in the corporate world is ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss’.
The above proverb refers to nomads who were always moving around without any responsibilities, knowledge or skills hence they could not establish any culture or civilization of their own. It also refers to stagnation or lack of masterly knowledge if someone keeps shifting their expertise from one area to another. The proverb directly conveys a message to the people that one has to stay in one particular field or area only then they can acquire the required competencies and knowledge otherwise they would become ‘jack of all trades’ and ‘master of none’.
But the proverb ‘rolling stone gathers no moss’ does not have right fitment in the corporate world. The ‘success’ is known and possible in corporate only to those who are exactly like a ‘rolling stone’. If someone has worked in different fields even for a limited period of time, those people are considered to be the most competent than those who does not have such exposure. A mere exposure in many fields can make one competent in the corporate world. Or in other words, ‘jack of all trades’ is the most wanted in most corporate than ‘experts’ or ‘specialists’.
Such ‘master of none’ is popularly and affectionately referred as ‘people managers’ by most corporate and it’s HR. Most corporate gives a lot of importance to people managers as they believe that tasks can be accomplished only by people managers. The salary paid to the people managers is far more than the specialists’ in most instances.
A perfect ‘people manager’ is the one who only knows just to ‘shift’, ‘rotate’ and ‘revolute’ people in the ‘work space’ and achieves some results through the arithmetic of ‘permutation and combination’ or ‘trial and error’ possibilities. But the organization would love to describe such achievements as the outcome of ‘highly innovative’ approaches of these managers.
When one would duly qualify for the best people manager position/title? When an employee became a ‘sage’ by ‘renouncing’ his or her knowledge and core expertise’ and become a ‘generalist’ and a ‘global’ visionary, the corporate would grab them for ‘people manager’ job.
The interesting twist or difference between a ‘real sage’ and ‘corporate sage’ people must know in the right perspective. A man becomes a ‘sage’ when he renounces the materialistic world and sharp in his/her knowledge and wisdom and its acquisition. Whereas, the evolution of the corporate ‘sages’ (people managers) are depends on the quick ability of people in the corporate to renounce the ‘knowledge and sharp wisdom’. That would make them a globalist. Once they renounce their knowledge, they would become ‘people managers’, ‘rich in the materialistic’ world.
The irony is that one become poor to acquire knowledge (to become a real sage) while the other become rich when looses the knowledge (people managers in corporate).
The HR must seriously ask the question as what core competencies their people managers display and how relevant such competencies are for the organization. While feeding the shepherd, also feed the sheep as they are only going to yield you milk and milk products.
