The Career Manager As An Ant Or A Grasshopper

Ants never quit.  If they're headed somewhere and you try to stop them, they'll look for another way.  Ants think winter all summer.  You can't be so naive as to think summer will last forever. So ants are gathering in their winter food in the middle of summer.  Ants think summer all winter.  During the winter, ants remind themselves, "This won't last long; we'll soon be out of here." Ants gather all that they possibly can during the summer  to prepare for the winter.

Let’s take all of the above one step further, particularly as it applies to  career managers and leaders. As the story goes, while the ant works and works and enjoys life responsibly, the grasshopper just sings, attends parties  and enjoys life to the extreme fullest. And what is the result  of this? Consistently, every winter/rainy season, the grasshopper goes to beg the ant for food and the ant only obliges the little that he believes he can do without. As time went on, of course, the ant which always saved for the rainy day, invested the surplus in acquiring better education or setting up a business. The grasshopper, years later, not having planned his life, and always in desperation for food, goes and gets a lowly job in the exact company which the ant owns or has risen to be a very top management staff.

As the world will have it, a financial and business crisis starts worldwide. The lowly staff, who is the grasshopper, is among the first to lose his job which is in the control of the ant who, as mentioned earlier, either owns the business or is a very influential top management staff. Whatever the situation, we find that the ant is better equipped to handle ‘the storm’ than the grasshopper. Does this scenario ring a bell? Unfortunately, as this current scenario is playing out, another ant and another grasshopper enter the corporate world for the same scenario to be repeated once again, later.

You are like an ant, we believe, but are some of your peers or subordinates grasshoppers? We leave you to check and judge. Kindly share this fabulous but instructive message with others, for we just do not know who may greatly benefit from it.