Business
Don’t Let Your Pride Get in the Way of Creativity and Innovation
A business parable with cigar-smoking lions
Phillip the lion lay in the tall grass, waiting for some of the other members of his team to flush the gazelle in his direction. His pride always hunted together in the same area that Phillip had come to think of as the Red Ocean, because of the way the sunset shone across the tops of the grass in the huge open plain.
As planned, the gazelle sped into sight, heading right for Phillip. He and his hunting partner waited until the prey was nearly upon them, then leapt up and made clinical work of creating a nice meal for the pride.
As always, the older lions — the leaders of the pride — had watched all this from their vantage point and then sauntered down to the feast. The young hunters like Phillip knew that it was tradition that the leader lions ate their fill first; leaving the scraps to the young spirited hunters.
When Phillip first started hunting, this tradition seemed fine because the gazelle were plentiful and the pride always had more than enough to go around. Lately though, it seemed like there was less and less prey to be found.
Phillip and the younger hunters relied on the pride leaders to find the areas where the gazelle hung out. Sometimes Phillip wondered if the older lions were losing their touch on current habits of the gazelle, or whether the gazelle population might be dwindling.
After work, Phillip liked to explore the outer reaches of the area where his pride lived. Today, not really all that far from where they had been hunting, Phillip pushed through a thicket of bushes to find a huge, sparkling, dark blue pond. In the pond, odd looking silver objects swam and thrashed about.
Phillip had been told all his life that lions don’t swim and to be wary of large bodies of open water. However, the moving silver objects were captivating, and he pushed closer to get a better look. As Phillip was staring into the deep waters and considering calling this place Blue Ocean Pond, the bank below his paws gave way and he tumbled straight into the deep water.
Much to his surprise, Phillip found that swimming was rather easy, and if you really thought about it, quite delightful. Not only that, he was able to use his long claws to hook one of the fat fish swimming in the pond and it was delicious!
As Phillip lay on the bank in the sun grooming his sleek fur with his tummy full of fish and omega 3 fatty acids (whatever those are), he began to get an idea. He would tell all the other lions about the pond, and they could come here and catch fish when the gazelle hunting was poor — like it was so often these days.
Fortunately, the next day was the weekly lion pride team meeting. Phillip waited patiently as the older lions passionately debated the best places to find gazelle. By tradition the older lions always spoke first; then if time allowed, anyone else could comment.
Before long the meeting was over, and Phillip hadn’t gotten a chance to tell about the pond and its amazing potential. Now that he thought about it, while all the young lions were required to attend the meeting, he couldn’t ever remember when there was a time when a younger lion got to speak.
Phillip was persistent though, so he followed the older lions to their special lounge area where they always sat around and smoked cigars after business meetings. When there was a brief break in the stories about the good old days when gazelle were plentiful, Phillip cleared his throat and began to tell about the pond.
A few of the lions lazily gazed in his direction, but then they all soon returned to talk of days of yore. “Lions can’t swim, Phillip, why would we ever care about a pond?” Lion laughs abounded.
Dejected, Phillip returned to the pond. When he arrived, he found that a different pride of lions was gathered at the site. Phillip watched from the thicket as all the lions, young and old, harvested their own fish and then lounged in the cool water in the shallows.
As he started to back out of the thicket, one of the lions from the other pride noticed Phillip and gestured for him to come over. He met Phillip at the bank and said, “There are plenty of fish in the pond for everyone, help yourself”. Phillip did just that, and as he devoured the plump and delicious fish the other lion continued to speak.
It turned out that the other pride had discovered that the pond is part of a river system and that ponds just like this one were located about every mile or so along the river. Fish were plentiful, and the other pride was the only other group that ate the fish — at least as far as they knew.
The other pride was readying to leave. Fishing was so easy and plentiful that they had all developed other hobbies and Celeste was headed off to her hang-gliding lesson, Benjamin and Maeve had a pickle ball tournament, and Connor (the lion talking to Phillip) was planning on giving scuba diving a try this afternoon.
As they parted ways, Connor said to Phillip, “Hey, if you ever want to come join our pride we have plenty of room. Everyone works together really well, and we value outside ideas. We would love to have you!”
Phillip thought about this as he wandered back to his pride, omega 3 fatty acids working their magic to make his coat extra sleek and shiny.
But Phillip felt a sense of allegiance to his pride and it seemed like he should make one more attempt to at least tell the older lions about the fish, and how shiny your mane becomes after eating just a few of those tasty beauties.
After a few weeks and then an especially poor day of gazelle hunting, Phillip thought it might be the perfect time to pitch his idea for eating fish. After all, full lion tummies are much better than empty ones. He approached the lion leaders, and once again tried to tell them about the bounty of fish waiting to be caught just a short distance away.
The lion leaders barely listened before they began to verbally attack Phillip and the rest of the younger lions, saying that if they only were more efficient and didn’t use so much family leave to take care of their cubs, that everyone would doing fine. In the old days…
Phillip just walked away. Then he started running; straight to Blue Ocean Pond. Phillip joined up with Connor’s pride and spent the rest of his days eating fish and lounging in the cool waters of the ponds all up and down Blue Ocean River. Oh, and he took up Jai Alai and became quite good at it.
The Moral of the Story:
Don’t let your pride get in the way of creativity and innovation.
I don’t think I have to unpack much here. Don’t let old ideas and presumptions about what you can or cannot do get in the way of your success.
If you are an organizational leader consider making it a practice to let the less-tenured people speak up first at meetings. Otherwise they might be intimidated or intentionally quieted and you will miss out on ideas that could be extremely valuable for your organization.
Get plenty of omega 3 fatty acids, your coat will shine.
P.S. This one is for you, Kevin. I only had the first story in mind, but I figured I better do a follow up since you liked that one so much!
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Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. He firmly believes that bad managers destroy more than companies, and good managers create a passion that is contagious. Compassion, grace and gratitude drive the world; or at least they should. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and join the mail list.
