Missing the Trees for the Woods

A walk in our home garden got me musing about a well-watered garden and organizational leadership.

Top: During construction of our home in 2003-4 on barren, denuded land; bottom: 16 years later lush with thoughtful planting of trees, plants and shrubs.

Reflections #55

A walk in our home garden got me musing about organizational leadership and what it takes to get to the top of the heap.  

Complete story at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathewanthony/detail/recent-activity/ and www.matchatter.blogspot.com

Missing the Trees for the Woods

How managers grow into leadership roles

Until a few weeks back, I barely paid attention to the garden we are privileged to have at our home, replete with variety of flowering shrubs, fruit bearing trees, and leafy plants that soothe the eyes, provide oxygen for the lungs, absorb carbon dioxide to deter climate change, and provide shelter from the sweltering heat of the summer for those who happen to be in the area. A desirable CSR mandate for environmentally conscious companies.  

In fact, a recently shared post of the burst of greenery at our home was shown to a convalescing patient by a dear friend, bringing cheer to her mother’s heart, as the splendour and effusion of nature played out before her eyes. The pictures are posted at https://www.instagram.com/p/CBpr0_mDFOs/?igshid=1os133xypq80v and at https://www.instagram.com/p/CBpsyx3DAB2/?igshid=6thiijcoc8d7

Recent showers in Bangalore has made our garden a tapestry of interwoven colours and shapes, magnetically drawing me to study the ‘Eden on earth’ in greater depth after 14 long years of its evolving presence in my life.

I began to acquaint myself with the flora tagging behind my wife, a planter's daughter, the author of this munificence to the neighbourhood, when she took our guests around. I try to learn a bit about each plant with each excursion like an intern learning from his supervisor. 

I began to notice how different each plant was from the other. I was even more fascinated, when with camera in hand, I took closeup pictures of the flowers and leaves. The infinite patterns in them were mesmerizing.

In business there is a saying not to 'miss the woods for the trees', implying that the ultimate success in the corporate world comes from having the ‘big picture’ to make it to the top management layer and to a board-level role.

Each of the corporate honchos of today and in the yesteryears, came from a discipline of study in which they graduated and grew professionally over a period of time into responsible positions in the firm and in the industry.  

The career path would be marked by phases of ascent: managed small departmental teams, held forth at company strategy meetings, led high impact and profitable projects of significance to their company, contributed to the vision of the enterprise in their capacity as senior executives in the company, and finally, they became first among equals reaching the pinnacle of the corporate pyramid because they were perceived amongst their peers to have the big picture to deliver y-o-y growth as expected by the shareholders and promoters.

At each phase of their growth, these potential leaders, switched between ‘seeing the woods for the trees’ and seeing the ‘trees for the woods’. Just one track could not have cut it for them in their unrelenting march to the top of the heap.

They grew in the organization with a personal vision which fused with the company vision snapping up aligned opportunities that presented themselves or prospected deliberately, in a fast-changing, technologically-accelerating world. They recognized that 'what they see today is not what it will be tomorrow'.

At the head of this article there are two stark pictures. The first picture is a google map of the barren plot of land on which sits our home today. Not a single tree existed over acres of land when we began to build our home. And, one beside it, is a snippet of what the rest of the garden looks like.

(click link to see picture https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathewanthony/detail/recent-activity/)

Like an early promoter of an enterprise, my planter wife had a vision of what she would like her home to be. She bought and planted at regular intervals with a big picture in mind of the variety she would like adorning her garden.

It's sixteen years to date in 2020. We are blessed to live in the 'woods' while being surrounded by apartments, in the middle of bustling Sarjapur – the third fastest residential hub in the country - and the fastest growing in Bangalore.

Plants have seasons, soil, sun and moisture that helps them grow. Fast growing enterprises, such as unicorns, have technology, bootstrapped or funded business models, economic growth tailwinds, and the right talent in the right position, spurring their growth.

For a promoter or corporate leader to manage a business well, small or big, comes down to tracking a few key metrics – the trees: Net Interest Income for banks, per square foot realizations for retail, organic account growth for advertising agencies, etc.

The future business tycoon should also have the ability to simultaneously keep a sharp eye on the woods – the environmental and economic engine that drives his or her business.

Rising tides lift all boats. Being fooled by spike in its own revenue growth while the industry is growing even faster leads to erosion of share and doomsday looming not too far, as the industry leader wipes the floor with his competitors.

The horticulture in our garden is of the same soil and gets the same sunshine and rain. An ambitious company would not want to restrict itself to just one fruit or flower or leafy plant as a business line, in a manner of speaking. It would use the ‘soil’, its expertise and assets in its command, to multiply it and grow into a conglomerate - the woods.

A gardener knows his trees by their name and by their needs. A company promoter, businessman or a corporate head should know what makes the business tick, to build adjacent or new business, consciously and in a phased manner, so as not to be overleveraged, to hedge his overall business against headwinds, as deep woods do during inclement weather in protecting the trees.

As the planter builds his plantation one tree at a time a corporate leader should build his business one business line at a time to know each business well enough to be in control even when the operations are handled by individual managers.

Know the ‘trees for the woods’ and know the ‘woods for the trees’ to build and manage a profitable, competitive and sustainable business that has the richness and celestial beauty of a well-planted and watered garden – a gift to the community.  

Why Trees Matter

TREES are on the front lines of our changing climate. And when the oldest trees in the world suddenly start dying, it’s time to pay attention.


North America’s ancient alpine bristlecone forests are falling victim to a voracious beetle and an Asian fungus. In Texas, a prolonged drought killed more than five million urban shade trees last year and an additional half-billion trees in parks and forests. In the Amazon, two severe droughts have killed billions more.


The common factor has been hotter, drier weather.


We have underestimated the importance of trees. They are not merely pleasant sources of shade but a potentially major answer to some of our most pressing environmental problems. We take them for granted, but they are a near miracle. In a bit of natural alchemy called photosynthesis, for example, trees turn one of the seemingly most insubstantial things of all — sunlight — into food for insects, wildlife and people, and use it to create shade, beauty and wood for fuel, furniture and homes.


For all of that, the unbroken forest that once covered much of the continent is now shot through with holes.


Humans have cut down the biggest and best trees and left the runts behind. What does that mean for the genetic fitness of our forests? No one knows for sure, for trees and forests are poorly understood on almost all levels. “It’s embarrassing how little we know,” one eminent redwood researcher told me.


What we do know, however, suggests that what trees do is essential though often not obvious. Decades ago, Katsuhiko Matsunaga, a marine chemist at Hokkaido University in Japan, discovered that when tree leaves decompose, they leach acids into the ocean that help fertilize plankton. When plankton thrive, so does the rest of the food chain. In a campaign called Forests Are Lovers of the Sea, fishermen have replanted forests along coasts and rivers to bring back fish and oyster stocks. And they have returned.


Trees are nature’s water filters, capable of cleaning up the most toxic wastes, including explosives, solvents and organic wastes, largely through a dense community of microbes around the tree’s roots that clean water in exchange for nutrients, a process known as phytoremediation. Tree leaves also filter air pollution. A 2008 study by researchers at Columbia University found that more trees in urban neighborhoods correlate with a lower incidence of asthma.


In Japan, researchers have long studied what they call “forest bathing.” A walk in the woods, they say, reduces the level of stress chemicals in the body and increases natural killer cells in the immune system, which fight tumors and viruses. Studies in inner cities show that anxiety, depression and even crime are lower in a landscaped environment.


Trees also release vast clouds of beneficial chemicals. On a large scale, some of these aerosols appear to help regulate the climate; others are anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral. We need to learn much more about the role these chemicals play in nature. One of these substances, taxane, from the Pacific yew tree, has become a powerful treatment for breast and other cancers. Aspirin’s active ingredient comes from willows.


Trees are greatly underutilized as an eco-technology. “Working trees” could absorb some of the excess phosphorus and nitrogen that run off farm fields and help heal the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. In Africa, millions of acres of parched land have been reclaimed through strategic tree growth.


Trees are also the planet’s heat shield. They keep the concrete and asphalt of cities and suburbs 10 or more degrees cooler and protect our skin from the sun’s harsh UV rays. The Texas Department of Forestry has estimated that the die-off of shade trees will cost Texans hundreds of millions of dollars more for air-conditioning. Trees, of course, sequester carbon, a greenhouse gas that makes the planet warmer. A study by the Carnegie Institution for Science also found that water vapor from forests lowers ambient temperatures.


A big question is, which trees should we be planting? Ten years ago, I met a shade tree farmer named David Milarch, a co-founder of the Champion Tree Project who has been cloning some of the world’s oldest and largest trees to protect their genetics, from California redwoods to the oaks of Ireland. “These are the supertrees, and they have stood the test of time,” he says.


Science doesn’t know if these genes will be important on a warmer planet, but an old proverb seems apt. “When is the best time to plant a tree?” The answer: “Twenty years ago. The second-best time? Today.”


Jim Robbins is the author of the forthcoming book “The Man Who Planted Trees.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/opinion/why-trees-matter.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120412