A lesson from the Ants revisited

Companies today are very interested in engaging their employees to the greatest extent possible because an engaged person tends to work toward greater things. Think about it. If you are engaged in a sport, you contribute your best to help the team be successful, because your success is their success. Businesses are like that, but the problem is, a business does not often present an engaging reason to engage.

I do believe engagement is environmental. It is in fact a necessity for the health of an "ecosystem", be it a company, a person, or an ant colony.  If you are reading these blogs, you might remember the one about the ants in Brazil.  They all got together and used their collective strength to carry a piece of cookie 5 times their size back to their queen. In a colony, ants that don't work, I suspect, don't survive. People are like that too.  A person who is engaged in his or her life is actively living. 

So, if engagement is so important to a person's personal ecosystem,  I often wonder to myself - why do people check out?  Why do they opt out? And why would they actually spend time being unhealthy, which sets an entire path in motion.  In the ant world, my guess this would have negative effects on both the ant and the colony.  We all observe this in the workforce.

But what a waste.  It's hard to get in the game sometimes, and yes, it's hard to care about everything. But one has to care about the people to whom he or she is responsible and his or her commitments.  Step back and think about it. What matters most?  I would say family, health and happiness matter the most. The rest is just geography.