• How did you think of linking nature and management?

About 10 years ago there was an explosion of TV channels like the National Geographic and Animal Planet. I was fascinated by what happened under the sea, in the air, how a tiger devours its prey, how mating happens. Animals also have a brain and act accordingly, but their brain is different from that of humans. That’s how the connection came to my mind. I wanted to see whether the stories derived from nature were applicable to management. That’s how the idea began.

• So you have been building a library of stories for years.

Yes, I got my first opportunity to try it out at the All-India Management Association. I used one of these stories hesitantly, experimentally, and surprisingly, I wasn’t booed out. People came up and said it was novel and interesting. Then I started collecting. For instance, I had heard the bonsai crocodile story at a Unilever conference in Zimbabwe, and years later, I found that the same thing was happening to katla fish in 24-Parganas, West Bengal. I have collected almost 30 books and videos.

• Drawing from nature what would your advice be to managers?

As the world changes rapidly, it is important to appreciate that analysis and logic have limitations. They can get you so far and no more. When you have reached the limits of analysis and logic, you have to use the gut. I often use the metaphor of a man who is trying to drive on a foggy morning on a mountain road, trying to go from place A to place B. Does he drive his car at 100 km an hour? No. A business leader these days is like this driver on a foggy road. Yet we expect a business leader to drive like Michael Schumacher all through. At the end of the day, you have to drive the way you can drive: if you are the guy who is seeing the fog and you look tentative, so be it. Just do what you have to do and let the results turn out whichever way. That’s what I call relying on intuition.