Today's Business Lessons
A rat through the crack
By Francis J. Kong
(The Philippine Star)
Updated September 02, 2012
A rat looked through a crack in the wall to see the
farmer and his wife opening a package. “What food might it contain?” he
wondered. He was aghast to discover that it contained a rat trap
instead.
Retreating to the farmyard, the rat proclaimed a warning. “There is a
rat trap in the house! A rat trap in the house!” he announced.
The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, “Excuse
me, Mr. Rat, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no
consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it.”
The rat turned to the pig and told him, “There is a rat trap in the house! A rat trap in the house!”
“I am so very sorry, Mr. Rat,” sympathized the pig, “But there is
nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured that you are in my
prayers.”
The rat turned to the cow. The cow said, “Like, wow, Mr. Rat, a rat trap! I am in grave danger… Duh?!”
So the rat returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the
farmer’s rat trap alone. That night, a sound was heard throughout the
house, like that of a rat trap that has caught a prey. The farmer’s wife
rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she didn’t see that it
was the tail of an enormous snake the trap had caught. The snake bit the
farmer’s wife.
The farmer rushed her to the hospital. When she returned home, she
was still running a fever. Now everyone knows you treat a fever with
fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for
the soup’s main ingredient.
His wife’s sickness continued, so friends and neighbors came to sit
with her round-the-clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig.
The farmer’s wife didn’t get well. She eventually died. So many
people came for her funeral that the farmer had the cow slaughtered to
provide meat for all of them to eat.
When there’s a rat trap in the house, the whole farmyard is at risk!
So next time you hear somebody is facing a problem, don’t think that it
doesn’t concern you.
“It’s his problem not mine.”
“I don’t care… It doesn’t concern me.”
I still hear people say such things in the work place. How wrong they
are! You’ve got to be dumb or just plain selfish to think that a
teammate’s problem is of no consequence to you. In the workplace,
everybody’s in the same boat. Even if you’re the best ship captain in
the world, if your ship was the Titanic, you’d still sink with it.
Learn to play as a team member. When you go to your work place in the
morning, make sure to park your ego on the parking lot. Don’t bring it
into the office building.
And learn a lesson or two from bees on the subject of teamwork.
Charles Dygert, in his book Success is a Team Effort, tells the
fascinating story of how bees survive the bitter cold of winter through a
system of cooperation. Says Dygert, “Bees live through cold
temperatures by a strategy of committing to a common cause through
mutual aid. They form into a ball and keep up what amounts to a non-stop
motion that resembles a dance.
To accomplish their goal, the bees
change places; those that have been on the cold outer edge move to the
center, and those at the center move out. If those in the middle
insisted on staying there – keeping the others at the edges – they would
all perish.”
The survival of nations, businesses, families and individuals hinges
on how people apply the strategies of working together. We must see
ourselves as part of a crew, not rowing the vessel alone. As Zig Ziglar
has observed, “The people with whom you share your goals will play a
major part in whether or not you reach those goals.”
And what does the Bible have to say about the essence of teamwork?
Consider others better than yourself, and then do to others as if you
were the others – that’s the gist of it.
Thanks to Walter Smith for today’s Illustration.
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