To Catch a Wild Pig – A Parable About Today’s Society That Offers Valuable Lessons for Leaders
I came across this excellent article by Norman Wolife, President/CEO, Quantum Leaders, a regular contributor for Fast Company.
In it he describes how if you want to catch a wild pig you lay down corn in the forest and over a period of time build a fence one section at a time until the pigs are happy to enter through a gate in the fence to collect their “free food”. Once inside the enclosure the gate is closed trapping the pigs, they run around madly for a while but then calm down and return to the food. It takes some time to hunt like this but at the end of it you have the whole herd captured and not just one pig.
The parable is an interesting one in our western society today especially with the current financial crisis. The fence can be equated to rules and regulations slowly encircling business. Norman argues that we must guard carefully not to fall into the trap of being so dependent on the government that we lose our sense of responsibility and even worse, the very spark of life. On the other end is allowing things to run wild which has led to the financial crisis.
The trick is to find a balance between regulation and freedom and this requires true leadership. As the article points out “The trouble we have in our political system is we keep running back and forth between taming the wild pigs and letting them run wild. Wildness is good for creativity, entrepreneurialism, and the like. You want the free flow of energy to stimulate new innovation. And yet when you have unbounded flow of energy you have chaos, which then has to correct itself. As we learn to work with the powerful flow of societal energies, I believe we can learn to modulate the unbounded flow of energy while not reaching the point of constraining it to where we are limiting its flow.”
The parable’s lesson is not only for society but also for business. How many companies so over manage their projects that they miss out on the innovation and creativity of “running wild”. The lessons from the current crisis and the message for leadership is the importance of finding a balance between rules and regulations and the unbridled freedoms that lead innovation astray.
You can read the full article here
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Great ‘food for thought’