The Kangaroo Plan & Other Analogies

The Kangaroo Plan & Other Analogies

The other day I was talking with two former small business clients of mine just catching up. Then we started talking about my new business ventures. At the end of our conversation, one of them asked if he could be a part of my business. I said sure – if his had a half of million dollars to purchase the license, why not. He laughed and suggested that how about he sign-up to get the license and when the business picks up he can then give me the licensing fee. I smiled in turn and said “Sure, that’s what I call in business a ‘Kangaroo Plan’, so keep on hoping!”  The other guy asked me what a “kangaroo plan” is. I explained that as you know the Kangaroo has a pouch it carries its baby, so a “business kangaroo plan is when you carry someone in your pouch and you do all the hopping work! We all burst out laughing. He like the term and was going to use it from then on. The Kangaroo plan is an expression I use often in my business training and conversations with small business clients. However, up until then no one had ever asked me what it meant so I had not really articulated the meaning of it. I just assumed that whoever heard me say it understood what I meant.
I recalled that a very dear friend of mine once said to me, I used a lot of animal analogies in my conversations. As it happens she was venting about her eldest brother’s mannerisms and I told her he is “a damn Rooster”. She asked me why I had called him a Rooster. Well, I explained that from what she was saying, all he does is stand on the family pedestal suggesting ideas and ordering everyone around, but he never steps up to the plate to execute solutions or contribute funds to the family problems – well that’s a Rooster! It gets up at the crack of dawn to give its crow, waking everybody else then spend the rest of the day doing nothing else but posturing in the yard or chasing the hens! She laughed so hard because she said it was so befitting of his mannerism. Then another time we were debating, more like disagreeing over something and I said she was acting like a goat (being stubborn and silly at the same time)!  She called her mother and told her I had called her a goat! Her mom thought it was hilarious, and agreed with me –she is a country girl who grew up in Louisiana – she knows how goats behave. From then on every time we got into our heated debates, I would accuse her of being a goat again and we would just burst out laughing and the difference of opinion would dissipate.

Growing up half my childhood life on a commercial farm owned by my paternal grandparents involved living and interacting with a lot of farm animals, as well as some wild ones too. We had cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, donkeys, dogs, cats, etc, encountered hyenas, vultures, rabbits, deer, monkey, baboons, snakes, lizards and all sort of insects!  The stereotype that in African people are living happily with lions, elephants, cheetahs, zebras and the like is not true. The ‘real’ wild animals don’t come near human habitats unless they get desperate for food. Anyway the experience of living on a farm taught me a lot about animal behavior. Over the years I unconsciously related these behaviors to human personalities and habits. It wasn’t till my friend made her observations about my analogies that I realized how often I make these parallels.

I have seen a lot roosters, goats, hens, bulls, cows, pigs goats and sheep in many of us! Hens fuss a lot for no apparent reason like damsels in distress and seemingly on the brink of hysteria, donkeys just take it and take it and then one day they just go rouge in public without warning; bulls always take charge stay cool and take their sweet time, sheep just follow each other in a bunch and if one gets separated it becomes so frantic like it missing its body parts, prigs are dirty, sloppy greedy and act like there is scarcity, monkeys are always needing something and when they can’t get it they will steal it and they are cunning at it too, baboons are very territorial, bullies and swagger around with a sense of entitlement and authority over what I don’t know. However cows are the most interesting because they have such diverse mannerism and behaviors. This I learnt from herding cattle.

Although we always had farm workers, my grandfather believed that ownership comes with responsibility and  a disciplined work ethic. When we visited on school holidays all the vazukuru (grandchildren) had to participate in some of the farm chores reserved for the grandchildren, like cattle herding, sheep and goat herding, weeding my grandmother’s groundnuts fields and occasionally going to the dip-tank, a system to combat cattle disease. The duty I liked most was going to dip-tank, because all I did was eavesdrop on conversations between my father, grandfather and uncles catch up with the other farmers and watch the cattle resist getting in the chemical water, but once they were in the barrack line resistance was futile! It was not a frequent chore as the cattle only went there once every six months or so. From this experience I learnt about what I now call the ‘dip-tank management style’ in organization management. However, of the herding chores sheep were easiest…they always stay together like jello! Cattle herding, which was the most frequent duty we did, was better than goats which were your worst nightmare. You got the goat herding chore instead of time-out. With experience, having cattle duty became easy - all you needed to do was keep the heard together in a contained spot till they were done grazing, then take them to the water hole  in the paddock. Thereafter, the sun would be too hot and once they had grazed and drank they usually go under the tree shed to sleep or just get away from sun..

 So one day, my cousin and I had the duty of herding cattle instead of going to the groundnuts field. It was one of those holidays close to harvesting season when all the maize (corn) is nice and green in the fields. The first rule of thumb in herding cattle was one had to watch them at all times. The second was making sure that the cattle don’t go into the maize field. My cousin and I had done this a million times. It was better than going to plough weeds in my grandmother’s ground nuts fields. Anyway on that day when we were herding cattle my cousin and I were supposed to drive the cattle to the paddock for their grazing, but we didn’t feel like it. Besides there were parts of the paddock that gave us the creeps when the vegetation was green and thick, so we were scared of being in there in the mornings because the cattle would have more energy and enthusiasm to wonder than later in the day when the sun is too hot in the afternoon and we could control them easier. She and I decided we were not taking them into the paddock but were going to keep them in another part of the farm with a grazing field near the house. All morning we managed to do this, and then to keep ourselves entertained we started playing hide and seek. After much  running around we decided to sit on the flat expansive granite rock (ruware) to enjoy the sun, tease some lizards while eating some wild berries we had pick up and continue our endless chatting. Then we fell asleep in the warm sun only to be awoken by loud yelling and screaming going on from the workers. From the direction where the noise was coming from, we knew instantly the cattle were in the maize field! We were in trouble. Our next chore would certainly be goat herding! It was. We were relegated to goat herding till my grandmother protested on our behalf.

Usually cattle are domesticated well and they know they were not supposed to go into maize fields. But in this particular herd there was one unruly naughty cow called “Milka”, so named because she always gave lots of milk, and she is the one we all knew had to watch. Milka could lead the entire herd astray and unravel your day with one move. Keep her in check and the whole heard would also be under control.  Due to her notorious tricks Milka wore a bell around her neck because she was known to wander off into all sorts of places and trouble and you could hear her comings and goings! I can never forget that damn bell of hers. Whenever it rang faster, you knew she was up to no good. Afterwards she would have such a look of contentment and satisfaction from her mischief. She was so boldly unruly that it was like dealing with a conniving, manipulative female human being. She would watch you all the time and the moment she realized you were not paying attention she would be at her shenanigans – whatever her flavor of trouble was for the day. I think she resented humans for taking her milk every morning.
I remember another incident I had with Milka. My cousin and I had been on cattle duty again, and we had had a great day in the paddock with the cattle. As we were heading home she broke away from the head and made a run for this thicket in the paddock. This thicket always gave me the creeps because it was a dark cluster of these big bushes, trees and vines all clumped up in this area. You could see through it but it was so dark, you did not know what might be lurking in it.  When she got into it, Milka just stood in the middle of it watch my cousin and I throwing stones at her trying to get her out. Two hours later she was still standing there, we were almost in tears as it was getting late and dark. It was like she was getting even with us, taunting and mocking us. We felt powerless. Finally by some miracle one of the bulls called Masvivi (named after my great grandfather) just got tired of it and went into the thicket and started thumping her with his horns till she got out. I was so angry at her I threw sticks at her all the way home.  As it got late, my grandfather got worried and had sent the workers to look for us because they did not know why we had not shown up. Being late usually meant that the cattle may have gone into the neighboring farmer’s fields and he would hold the cattle hostage till a ransom was agreed on. That was how disputes were resolved among the farmers.

The day of the maize raid, we knew Milka had orchestrated it. For a while we were not allowed to have cattle duty till my grandmother’s protest and also my brother and my cousin’s brother left the cattle to go into the neighboring farmer’s maize field. That was worse. They had been swimming in the paddock pond and lost sight of the cattle. Of course who had taken the lead into this trouble – Milka. I don’t remember what eventually happened to Milka but she certainly left a lasting impression on me. In school and at work I have encountered lots of female Milka’s too!

Copyright @ June 18, 2011 by Dr. Tendai Ndoro begin_of_the_skype_highlighting  end_of_the_skype_highl(DocNdoro) – Founder, SLIPPA (Strategy Leadership Institute in Private & Public Affairs); Brighten The Corner Foundation; CEO EDCTrainers, LLC.