Examples

It must have been at school that I heard this thing about the importance of examples to explain concepts. Yeah, I know that all of you know about how I thought of a classroom as the best place to catch up on my sleep. It is impossible to be sleeping all the time, you see, and this thing about examples must have seeped in during one of those brief episodes when my sleep was broken.

It HAS to be school, cannot be anywhere else. I mean, the teacher even acted upon that dictum and used examples to explain concepts and it WORKED! Obviously had to be school for that is about the only place I have seen it work. It probably works only with children, who tend to be unquestioning when it comes to authority figures. (WHAT?? Not even children are unquestioning? Especially children are not unquestioning? Ah, well, that must be the millenial gene or something, which we guys did not have.)

Came adulthood and, as usual, I tried applying the lessons of my childhood...yeah, one of those which never work, again! (Getting monotonous, is it? Well, I cannot keep track of what is monotonous, and what is not, for you. Bollywood actors routinely changing their significant others seems to be endlessly fascinating and non-monotonous to you, so how am I to know what you will find monotonous and what not?)

So, yeah, there I was trying to explain that, if you are seriously interested in retaining a particularly talented person, you tried to give her what SHE wanted instead of what YOU think she should want. The latter invariably reduces itself to what YOU yourself want, as we all know.

And I came up with THIS example.

"When you are fishing, you bait the hook with a worm, don't you? It does not matter that YOU do not like worms, what is important is what the fish likes."

Clear as crystal, I thought. Communicates the point effectively, I fondly hoped. What I failed to realize was that humanity hated arguing about abstract concepts and much preferred sinking its teeth into something more...meaty. So, giving them a concrete example was an open invitation to mayhem.

And so...

"Why do we presume that fish do not like to eat beef? After all, sharks even eat human beings, so a bit of rare beef..."

"...or a hamburger..."

"...or even cheesecake..."

Yes, and someone would soon come up with the possibility of fish finding a nice shiny metal hook yummy. So, that was the lot which believed in dissecting the logic of the example rather than the logic of the concept itself. So, I start off with needing to give the fish what IT wants and here we were discussing what fish really want. A very productive HR meeting...if we were hiring fish! THEN we would need to know if fish liked cheesecake...

Though exactly how logical was it to expect cheesecake to still stick on to the hook when the line is thrown into the water...I caught myself. Ugh! I'd almost fallen into the same trap. Arguing the logic of their opposition to the example...

Meanwhile, the next lot had started on the subject.

"You know, I don't think I like this. Seems too much like our employees are being hooked like fish."

This, then, is the 'Example IS the concept' lot. Or the ones who find that taking down the example will take down the concept. Or, at the very least, take down the chap who is proposing the concept.

"Yes, baited and hooked. As though employees will swallow it all - hook, line and sinker."

Well, THAT one sank, with the only titters coming from the 'wit' who said it. Indian corporate offices are not too full of people who had the fishing metaphors pat, after all. Not that it was any help to me.

"What I am proposing is that we give them what they REALLY want, not hoodwinking or cheating them", I bleated, halfheartedly. This wasn't going the way I thought it would. Examples! Faugh!

"Anyway, I think fishing ought to be banned. We must all turn Vegan..."

There - the man with a hobbyhorse! The ones who would find a way to ride his hobbyhorse, even where no one else would think it remotely possible. (I mean, getting Veganism into a HR policy discussion, when you are not even discussing the Canteen...that takes SOME doing, right?) OR, as he would himself say, a man of such strong principles that he would not let them be abrogated even in a hypothetical example!

"Tell me one thing! Are we here to discuss fishing?"

THERE - a man of sense! All that we HAD done was discuss fishing.

"Let me tell you about the time I went fishing with..."

Uhoh! Sensible?

If only what we had set out to do was to discuss fishing! It could not have been any less productive but, quite possibly, much more fun!