Scratch that Metaphor

[wildsweetone]

Scratch that Metaphor

Why the corner office shouldn't be a glass menagerie

In the business world, 800-pound gorillas run with the big dogs, swim with the sharks and occasionally find themselves up to their asses in alligators. And if they are not crazy like a fox, they can get caught like a deer in the headlights.

Yes, it's a jungle out there. Why else would H. Ross Perot have tormented the hapless, imperial CEO Roger Smith by declaring, "Revitalizing General Motors is like teaching an elephant to tap dance. You find the sensitive spots and start poking"? (Or did he say "lap dance"?) Why else would Warren Buffett lament corporate misgovernance by saying: "There is a tendency to put cocker spaniels on compensation committees, not Doberman pinschers"?

I don't mean to be a spoilsport. Businesspeople have a lot to learn from the animal world. But there are at least two problems here: one is that they trot out the same tired analogies over and over. Their companies spend millions developing iconic logos and otherwise polishing the corporate image, and then they go around prattling about lions, foxes and sharks. Predators ought to show a little more flair than that.

But what's worse is that they almost always get their animal behaviors wrong. So let's just dispense with a few myths right now:

You don't want to be an 800-pound gorilla. No such animal has ever existed. The average big daddy silverback tops out at about half that weight. And gorillas are not predators, but vegans, with an almost unlimited appetite for fruit and bamboo shoots. I once worked on a TV documentary about lowland gorillas; on an average day the dramatic episodes consisted of the alpha male passing gas, picking his nose and yawning. Then he did the same things, the other way around. Over and over. This is probably not the image a hard-charging executive wants to present to the public.

Nor do you want to be lionized. Once, in Botswana, I saw a male lion rouse himself to court a female, with lots of growling and nipping. Finally, grudgingly, she assumed the sphinx position and he mounted her. One of my companions, a National Geographic photographer, began whirring and clicking (with his camera, I mean). The big moment of leonine love lasted all of ten seconds. "Definitely a motor-drive picture," the photographer muttered. Think about this the next time the preening CEOs at an awards banquet liken one another to lions.

Ostriches don't bury their heads in the sand. They merely lower their heads to the ground to avoid detection while keeping an eye out for danger. They may even lie on the ground with necks outstretched. In the African savanna where they live, burying their heads in the sand would be a good way to get their tail feathers trimmed by a lion.

Lemmings don't leap off cliffs to commit mass suicide. When a population boom causes overcrowding, these Arctic rodents do the sensible thing and migrate en masse in search of a new home. A few may occasionally get crowded off a ledge as they swarm into unfamiliar territory. But it's an accident. Really.

Real weasels don't wear tasseled shoes. And they spend much of their time chasing down mice, rats and other rodents. This makes them heroes, not villains. So if you cannot call the slimiest executive you know a "tassel-shoed weasel," what should you do? Just say "sleazeball" and leave innocent animals out of it.

Having a "salmon day" is even worse than you think. Sales reps like to complain about having spent the day swimming upstream, only to get screwed and die. But real salmon merely spill their seed and their eggs on the streambed, leaving the little gametes to mix it up on their own. Meanwhile, the happy pair go belly up and drift away to get their hearts ripped out by a bear.

Then again, if you like animal analogies, this may be a more realistic characterization of a day in the life of the average sales rep.

by Richard Conniff

Scratch that Metaphor

 

[Liar]

"You don't want to be an 800-pound gorilla. No such animal has ever existed. The average big daddy silverback tops out at about half that weight."

Hello? King Kong?

 

[annaswirls]

"You don't want to be an 800-pound gorilla. No such animal has ever existed. The average big daddy silverback tops out at about half that weight."

Hello? King Kong?

ha ha! I heard he is a flesh eater in this version, yes?