Stop killing your Golden Goose now!
The Goose that laid the golden eggs is an Aesop’s Fable which most of us would have heard/read as a kid. Here’s a quick summary on the same:
There once was a man, one fine day he woke up to find a golden egg in his goose’s nest. He was confused and excited (as you will be if you find golden egg or a goose). He got it appraised and it indeed was real gold. Everyday he would wake up and find one golden egg. His fortune started building up, but as you could imagine he wanted to get it all at once without having to wait for an egg a day so he cut open the goose. Lo & behold there was no gold inside (well duh!).
Now you must be wondering why I am recounting this old fable for kids. Well, because there is a moral of the story which is something along the lines of don’t be greedy etc. However, as I was reading this brilliant book — 7 Habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey, he explained the concept of P/PC balance using this tale and I was thoroughly amused.
As per the book:
P = Produce (i.e. the Golden Egg)
PC = Capacity to Produce (i.e. the Goose who has the capacity to produce)
The balance between P and PC is very important.
If you just focus on the golden eggs i.e. the P and do not nurture the Goose, it will eventually fall sick and die and you’d be left sitting there cursing your bad fortune when in fact its your blunder that led you there. If you just focus on the goose i.e. the PC and don’t care about the golden egg eventually you’d be left with no resources to keep yourself or the goose alive (exaggerated for effect).
We mostly end up focussing on the “Golden Egg” and neglect the “Goose” and that’s where things go wrong for the most of us.
So the question is Are you killing your Golden Goose?
Let’s see how this manifests in different contexts:
Employee Retention: The P in this case is the work that can be extracted out of the employee and the PC is the employee. Now, when organisations mostly focus on getting the most out of their employees with little/no focus on the employee, what happens? Burnout, attrition , the great resignation wave, sadness all around. Then companies wonder why their employee retention is so low.
The other extreme for this is just focusing on keeping employees happy, doing whatever it takes to pamper them and now you have chaos and a dying business.
Financial Wellbeing: P being the income you generate on your money example the interest on your money. PC being the principal. Focus just on the P and you would invest in highly risky schemes and may be even ponzy schemes and will lose all your money and now you are bankrupt. (not exaggerated)
Focus just on P and keep slogging to increase that P but you won’t really make any money from that money because every investment is a little risky.
Relationships: This one is super easy. P being whatever you want out of a relationship/partnership/friendship be it emotional security/intimacy/companionship etc. PC being the person you have this relationship with. You optimise for P and you will strain the relationship because you don’t really show any care/concern towards what the other person wants/needs. It will be just take take take, till the other person can’t take it anymore. (Ignore the cheekiness, I couldn’t help myself.)
Optimise for PC and you are on the other extreme, you will be doing whatever it takes to make the PC happy and you’d end up eventually getting yourself exploited. It will be give, give, give, till you can’t give anymore.
Any asset(s): The PC being the asset for example a car and P being what you get out of the asset. If you optimise for P, you use your car to the maximum today without bothering to get it serviced. It will eventually breakdown and you will be stuck on the side of the road with a broken car and a temper tantrum (because that’s what we generally do as an entitled species). The other extreme is just mantaining the car and never using it ever, well that’s just funny and weird.
These are just few scenarios which I could think of. I am sure there may be many more. It is interesting how it’s just in front of us but we can’t see it. I am myself guilty of falling on one or the other extremes in different scenarios. Anyway the moral of the story or as they say the tldr version (imagine an eyeroll) is STOP KILLING YOUR GOLDEN GOOSE. NOW!