A recent article compares studies on groups of monkeys with corporate culture.

"The office and the jungle are surprisingly similar," says the report. "Both are ruled by stringent hierarchies, they are grounded in the need for co-operation, and complicated by the drive to compete.


"Add in the risk of hostile takeovers, a marketplace of favours and favourites, brazen opportunism and a long-held tradition of brown-nosing, and you can't tell the savannah from a forest of cubicles."

The magazine sets out five "rules of the jungle" that would apply equally in the office:
1. Don't take credit for work done cooperatively.
2. Stay on your boss's good side.
3. Don't bear grudges.
4. Be a team player.
5. Be a good boss by carefully balancing control, leadership and motivation.

Types of Leaders

Reading the review of Fidel Castro's autobiography - My Life in today's papers, I realised that successful leaders need to display two attributes Inspirational and Foundational. Some leaders may display both, while some one or the other. For instance Castro posseses both attributes while his alter ego Che Guevara was more of an inspirational leader, and less of a foundational one.

Castro as an inspirational leader - the book review reads - helped Che in fomenting revolution throughout Latin America and is now the exemplar of left-of-centre, anti US regimes.

As a builder, Castro built a complex, endurable and successful Cuban revolution through his qualities of acuity, an intellectual expansiveness, an almost pedantic attention to detail and, not the least, a generosity of spirit that allows accommodation.

So who is a better, more successful leader? Someone like Castro who displays both the attributes of being Inspirational as well as Foundational, or someone like Che who was inspirational, but not foundational? I believe Che - if he had lived and were to head a state - would have required a team which had foundational skills. A team of capable implementers inspired by Che would have been successful. But how about someone who has more of Foundational qualities - can someone other than the leader provide the inspiration for the team to be successful?

In the final analysis, I believe, it is easier for an inspirational leader to assemble a team of doers to lay the foundation for his vision, but slightly more difficult for a foundational leader to hire inspirational skills.

The Revival

It has been more than a year and half since I last posted on my blog and the reason for the revival lies in a recent meeting I had with a client.

At the meeting, I suggested that at the beginning of every month he describe to me five new things he has learnt in the past month. This, I said to him, would be a great way for him to anchor new learnings. As an afterthought, I said I too would share my learning with him. Easier said than done, I realised, because I do not have the habit of noting my thoughts and insights - and worse, promptly forget them the next day.

Hence the revival of my blog - to pen my insights.