The Theory of 'Seed and Soil' - All RCAs trace their origins into these 2 vantage points

Nature oftentimes lays out such cryptic messages that act as reliable guide posts when our life needs some serious steering. Look at the corollary of a plant that starts out as a tiny seed even as it packs in itself the potential to mushroom into a mammoth tree. In time, it produces thousands of seeds of its kind, each packed with this self engineered potential. If Warren Buffet was to ever name a proxy for his theory on compounding, a ‘seed’ would be it.

The human perception of life or the absence of it is very relative to its ability to express emotions. While a poodle cannot convey its feelings quite as well as we humans do, yet, there is no remote a parallel to its endearing, needy face. One neck tilt from the canine and ‘awwwww’ goes the lady, swiftly following it up with a bear hug. But don’t expect a chicken or a piglet to get any close a treatment, even if it were blaring in deadly distress. We fall prey to such callous bias at every passing step. Every wonder why?

We relate to every other specie around us through the same narrow keyhole of its facial expressions and body language that we commonly use as human beings. The farther the expression of emotion is to our demeanor, the lesser we relate to the other life form. To the point that we even subconsciously relegate it as an ‘object’; that which does not resonate signs of life or even, experience pain. This is the very reason we savor on chicken wings while we can’t stand the thought of a crooked trim on that poodle. For ages psychologists have called this behavior, ‘cognitive bias’; while commoners like us can go with something more tasteful, like ‘ignorance’!

By the same measure, we tend to take that tiny seed for granted and are blind-sided to its ability to create multitudes of fruit bearing trees. To produce such profound results at the gross level, the inner engineering of the seed must be as immaculate. Like any other form of life, it bears emotions (energy-in-motion) & the expression of it; just that the degree of this expression is too subtle for us to notice. But to a knowing mind, it exists all the same.

While the seed preserves the plant in an embryonic form, it needs something more potent to push it beyond its hybernative state. All the while that the seed is by itself, its entire packed machinery is lying dormant and is suddenly jolted into motion once it comes in contact with its preordained partner – the ‘soil’.

Thoroughly marinated in a mineral rich soil, the seed submits itself to the elements to take their course. Each mineral plays its part and acts as electrodes to spur new life into this seed, slowly restructuring its entire anatomy. As the seed breaks loose from its old form, it now begins breathing in the ecosystem surrounding it and with some cushion from nature and its partner elements, goes on to flourish into an ecosystems of its own.

While the seed plays mother and lends its womb, the soil supplies the key ingredients that act as fertilizing agents, to deliver to us this age old miracle; with both ends playing their supreme parts.

There is a similar two ended law that all of nature follows when it comes to ‘outcomes’ in any form. There is a mother seed element and then a father soil element encoded in each transaction which play their parts in producing any result that there has ever been, or will be. On the same lines, every occurrence in our social life and business has been a result of these distinct elements working in the backdrop.

All root cause analysis stem out of these 2 broad diversions, giving way to the resultant situation once they unify. To accurately decipher the effects of any undesirable results in life, or understand what engineered a favorable outcome, we need to trace back the causes into these 2 vantage points first.

Take a case of a distressed employee, one Mr. Ramsey, who has missed the proverbial promotion boat over a string of annual reviews. Instincts might nudge him to believe that the fault lies with the management and their undue favoritism toward the others who made it past him. He continues attending to the job with the same energy as earlier while the real reason remains uncharted. Here, his focus on the ‘soil’ element is lopsided and it surfaces in him seeking the acknowledgement and nourishment that the empowered management(the soil) can add to his career. But what remains unaccounted is the ‘seed’ – the quintessential spur needed to even get the ball rolling. Ignoring what and how much the employee should bring to the table will never get the cycle in motion. Its as futile to imagine a result without the seed, as much as it is to visualize winning a lottery, having yet to buy the ticket!

For a fresh take on the importance that the soil element brings to the table, lets take a contrarian view on the TCS board’s brush with the Cyrus Mistry episode, which is popularly understood as the latter’s failed leadership propaganda. Cyrus himself poses the ‘seed’ in this case, which led to an untoward situation for the Tatas to unwittingly partake in. However, the role of the ‘business environment’ which neglectfully allowed breeding of the cross cultures cannot be missed. With seismic shifts occurring in business environments today, more businesses are opting for dynamic and adaptive leaders. This also calls upon the predecessors and other stakeholders to acknowledge and encourage fresh takes at the new-age problems at hand. Conflicts in perspective are inevitable and yet the cultural synergy should breed respect for both view points.

With Infosys reeling into similar tides and the recent ousting of Travis Kalanick from the Uber board, this blindside has been brutally exposed. And yet, the ‘business environment’ (aka the soil element) was not found guilty on these boardroom cross fires that the whole world witnessed.