Monkey See, Monkey Do

Four monkeys were put together in a cage. After prancing around for a while, the monkeys espied a bunch of bananas that had been placed on top of a pole that ran from the centre of the cage to almost the roof. One of the monkeys scampered up the pole to grab the bananas. As the monkey reached out for the bananas, a trap door opened, and a powerful burst of water hit the monkey’s face, almost snapping back the animal’s neck. The monkey got thrown off the pole, and landed on its back, falling very hard. Huge stabs of pain ran through the monkey’s back and neck. The other monkeys stood around, horrified and bewildered.

The water was then disconnected, never to be used again. Fresh bananas were placed on top of the pole, every day. No monkey, even after wistfully looking at the ripening fruit for hours, moved towards the bananas. Next week, one of the four monkeys in the cage was replaced with a new candidate. This new fellow screamed with joy, “Bananas!” and proceeded to scale the pole. The other three monkeys jumped up with alacrity, pulled the new monkey down, wagged a finger at him, and said, “Never do that!” The fruit continued to rot, every day.

Over few weeks, all the four monkeys in the cage were new candidates. Yet, the fruit sat on top of the pole, rotting away.

At a programme on the importance of being customer-centric and customer-oriented, a Senior Manager would interrupt us after every point we made, and say, “In this company, we do not have these good practices. We really don’t care for the customer.” Or, “I have never seen this practised by anybody here…our bad habits are deeply ingrained.” And, “Our Senior Management must first understand these things. The trouble begins there.”

When challenged by the rest of her colleagues in the room for data and proof for where she has seen such incompetence in the company, she stood her ground for a while, gave up, and sulked all day. It never takes long for the troop of monkeys around you to start controlling you.

All criticism is not born out of cynicism. A man (in a Sufi story) was using a stick to beat a snake that had got under the carpet. Wherever the snake reared its head, he hits out. He would be pleased when the carpet went flat. After a brief while, the snake’s head would rear again at some other part of the carpet, and he hits again. You want to get the snake, you have to move the carpet. Hiding fears and flaws never works in the long run. 

Having presented a flawless business case, the team waited to receive appreciation from the CEO. The CEO started slowly, after an ominous silence. “I have been here for the last 10 years and we have, at least twice in the past, tried offering third-party products along with ours. It simply didn’t work for us…we burnt our fingers every time. Let us not go into history on why and why not. Just drop this. I don’t want to hear such proposals again…Have I made myself clear?” His menacing tone ensured that the tea break was called earlier than planned.

When a Greek philosopher said “You Never Step into the Same River Twice”, he was alluding to how all past experiences may not always be relevant today. Time, like the river, has flown by, and re-arranged things that came its way. Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey) while initiating Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) into the wiles of Wall Street in that iconic scene in “The Wolf of Wall Street” is past his prime and that made his advice both irrelevant and dangerous.

Working only on what already works, having enormous faith in the relevance of one’s past experience, letting a past mistake decide your future, stopping others from behaving differently from the rest of the herd….organizations are teeming with such stories, largely inspired by the monkeys in that cage.

French author Malcolm de Chazal points out that “Monkeys are superior to men in this: when a monkey looks into a mirror, he sees a monkey.”