How a mongoose attacks a snake, a business lesson is hidden inside, is a part of the series of business lessons’ articles that are published via WildTrails India editorial. This series mainly concentrates on what are the business lessons that we can learn from our wild animals who have mastered the art of survival, tackling competition, focus attack, marking/restricting territory, selecting their prey etc. These guys have mastered this art for 1000s of years and there is a lot to learn from them be it a startup or be it a marketing or a sales manager or be it a CEO or management folks or even development or a QA head or even contributor – there is a lesson for all of us.

How a mongoose attacks a snake, a business lesson inside!!

Mongoose generally doesn’t get affected by the venom of the snakes. [There are two kinds of venomous snakes – some are neurotoxin and some are hemotoxin. It is found that neurotoxin wont kill mongoose and researchers are still working on whether hemotoxin kills the mongoose but lets assume it won’t].

But the fact is that mongoose won’t like to be bitten by the snake as the bites are very painful. But they do attack the snakes and have a meal out of it. There are certain things they follow when they are attacking a snake. First & foremost, they attack them when they come out to the open plain fields and they wait for it to come in fact.  Once it makes up its mind to attack,  it makes sure that it does a lot of lateral movement very rapid and many many times, even before it attacks the snake. en it moves a lot of lateral movement very rapid and many many times and snake keeps matching as it should not be attacked from behind BUT mongoose knows snakes weakness and its own strengths very well. Snakes dont have that fast lateral movements and the more it does the more it gets tired and its response time decreases drastically and mongoose keeps noticing it and it knows when snakes energy is gone and then it makes the attack and almost successful always.

Watch some of the videos and see how tactful the mongoose it:

NatGeo Video

Another one –>

https://youtu.be/MARbnKTj2Kc

THE BUSINESS LESSON TO LEARN:

Mongoose knows its strength and more importantly Snake’s weakness. Mongoose attacks snake in a area where mongoose strength and snake’s weakness comes to fore and also it pulls snake to its strength area and them kills it. Remember in a bush, snake can coil around the mongoose and crush it to death. 

This is exactly what we need to do in business too. You need to know your strengths – something that probably is unique to you and probably others (mainly your competitors) cannot mimic it or cannot gain that strength. You also need to know your competitors strength and weakness very well, more so their weakness. In wildlife they know because their life & survival depends on it, and in business we don’t do it as religiously as our wildlife does.  If you are in control of a business or part of a business or a decision maker (say CxO), will you bet your life about knowing first your competitors, then comes their strengths and weaknesses? Not many can vouch for this.

The whole idea and learning behind this is – It’s about knowing your strength, knowing your enemy/competitor’s weakness, and pulling your competitor into your strength area and then you need to attack.

Further Reads:

Tips & Tricks from our Wildlife in the Era of Killer Competition

Business lessons from our Wildlife – Lesson #1 – Baya Weaver Bird

Mother Giraffe kicks their newborn & Why? Business lessons from our Wildlife, #2

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