When one has a peripatetic mind one tends to draw connections between seemingly disparate themes, and so, having a background in animal behavior and business, it wasn’t surprising to me that I should find myself musing about the similarity between certain types of birds and managers I’ve had the misfortune to interact with. 

 

Drawing a caricature using animal traits is not new; Aesop created his eponymous fables in 560 BCE and they are still known and quoted -  The Tortoise and the Hare, the Ass in the Lion's Skin spring to mind. But Aesop never had to deal with ineffectual middle managers with dubious credentials and a 16 year old’s entirely mistaken view that they are somehow special, unique, and most irritatingly, right about everything.

 

The Seagull

 

Swooping in where no one asked them to, and usually late, this type of irritation is known mostly for a dearth of new ideas, and the uncanny ability to make a lot of noise, eat all the donuts, and then proceed to shit on all of the work that had been done by the team up to that point. When asked for direction, or guidance, the seagull turns, fixes you with one eye and repeats the question as if it were their own, implying that, of course, it has all the answers, and that you, as part of the team should have anticipated the question that you just asked. When pressed, the Seagull creates more disturbance, shuffles some papers, looks nervously at their iPhone, as though someone has reminded them of the urgency of another situation, which, they inform you, must be dealt with, and they fly off, stuffing their maw with the last donut. 

 

The Magpie

 

Often lauded for their vision of the future, the Magpie is more destructive to a team than the Seagull. While the Seagull makes a lot of noise and institutes human resource guidelines,  the Magpie is always on the lookout for the new, the shiny, the next big thing. Not in itself a bad thing - the problem arises in the lack of pockets. Magpies don’t have pockets - and so if on the flight back to the cache to secret their find they see something else shinier, they drop the first object and pick up the second. This continues, and while each new idea is picked up, it is dropped as quickly as a new idea captures the imagination. 

 

In non - Aesopian terms: A Magpie finds a new idea (notice the verb, find, and not, create), and instructs his team that the company is going in this direction, and that these resources need to be allocated, and the deadline is this date. The team, being unfamiliar with the traits of the Magpie, springs into action. Research is done, reports are written, and game plans for a successful launch are readied in time for the deadline. A meeting is called, and at which point the Magpie swoops in, perches at the end of the boardroom table and tells the staff that he’s found a new shiny thing. The staff is confused, but swept up by the Magpie’s enthusiasm. The reports are filed, the plans shelved. The staff revs up to chase the new idea. Research, reports, plans, launch protocols as before. And again, just as the deadline is reached, yet another bit of mirrored glass or glinting candy wrapper is dropped on the table by the bright-eyed corvid. His black feathers seem ruffled by the lack of enthusiasm displayed by the team at the new bit of bling he has dropped as the new new. At this point, the team begins to put their energies into finding new jobs and the Magpie, convinced that the work he has done has been of unimpeachable worth caws to all that will listen that his team just didn’t have the stamina to keep up with his ability to find new shiny things. Eventually the Magpie gives themselves the title of rainmaker or thought leader.

 

The Cuckoo

 

The encyclopedia describes the cuckoo as a brood parasite. Simply put, it shows up unwanted at another birds nest, ejects one of that bird’s eggs and replaces it with one of its’ own. The unwitting mother bird is forced to rear a interloper, often with deleterious results to her natural brood.

 

You’ve met this person. They are hired to run a very small part of the company, and after being introduced to the staff, and spending no more than a day or so, become emboldened with the thought they have the answer to fix everything. That a time management system that they have heard about needs to be implemented, or a office seating model that they read about in an dentist’s office magazine would be just the thing, or, and perhaps the worst, they are fully trained on THE SYSTEM that  starts with a team rebuilding exercise that results in defined steps and quantifiable financial targets and synergizes re-engineering of separate functional tasks into complete cross-functional processes that define objectives within an organization so that management and employees agree to the objectives and understand what they are in the organization allowing them to empower decision-makers at multiple levels of a company.

 

In short, they show up spouting a bunch of new-age MBA bullshit and somehow manage to convince the executive team that the reason they haven’t grabbed the brass ring, or become a top ten player, or, the anathema of every president, remained relevant in a changing worldwide ecosystem, is that they haven’t adopted “THE SYSTEM” , and they, as the Cuckoo, is willing, nay, would be honoured, to share their special knowledge with the miserable unwashed that are careening around in the dark.

 

As THE SYSTEM becomes entrenched it derails perfecting functioning systems that have evolved to the local conditions of the office. Meetings are held. Three letter acronyms are trotted out. Then more meetings. Then meetings to discuss the cadence of the meetings. Objectives, goals and deadlines are confused. Morale plummets. Staff turns over. Which as counterintuitive as it seems, the Cuckoo sees as a positive.  Why? Because new staff are less resistant to the THE SYSTEM. 

 

Eventually, but never soon enough, the president realises THE SYSTEM was an utter waste of time that has done more harm than good, crushed morale, and seen many good staff fledge the nest. The Cuckoo feels the subtle change in the wind, and forms a consulting firm to promote THE SYSTEM to other companies before he is fired. He leaves on “good terms and is excited about exploring new opportunities” and tells any potential clients that his work had created a positive impact, and that the company’s success has been because of THE SYSTEM, not in spite of it.

 

It never occured to me at 5:00 a.m. that grey morning in university, when I was sitting under-caffeinated and hung-over and freezing my ass off in a duckblind on the edge of a pond watching birds bob and preen in preparation for coitus, that my degree in biology would one day be pillar I would lean on in explaining corporate behaviours. A tip of the hat to my professors that somehow knew this would come in handy one day.