SOMEBODY must take a chance. The monkeys who did became men, and the monkeys who didn’t are still jumping around in trees making faces at the monkeys who did. More than 30 years ago, I worked with several hundreds of people from different industries under a scientifically researched term called “employment.”

Just like me, these people were in human resources for a living. They came in all shapes and colors accentuated by different biases and prejudices. My first three bosses in human resources were a military captain, a lawyer, and the other—an accountant.

I worked with gays and straight, extroverts and introverts, womanizers and faithful husbands, drunkards and not-so-drunkards, and the list goes on and on. But if you will examine their personal lives, they all had one characteristic in common. They had an almost insatiable desire for extreme work performance.

That’s how I came to compare and contrast their work habits and management style that I was like a gosling to them. You know what a gosling would do upon breaking its egg-to become attached to the first moving object, which is generally its mother goose.

Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) discovered that goslings would naturally follow their mother, almost following her daily even through their adolescence. With that, Lorenz demonstrated not only those goslings copy and make decisions based on their mother’s discretion, and that they stick to it once it has been made.

This natural phenomenon is called “imprinting” by Lorenz.

With the “imprinting,” it appears to me now that what’s good for the goose is also good for humans. Looking back to my youthful days in elementary and high school when my hardworking parents tended a dry goods store in Laguna, retailing became imprinted to my mind as an important strategy for our family to make a decent living. Retailing as an imprint helped me appreciate durable and popular brands like Magnolia ice cream, Dove soaps and lotion, Hanes underwear, Brut cologne, Montagut shirts, and many more.

Even up to these days, I would buy Magnolia ice cream products for my children and Dove lotion for my spouse, regardless of their current price because I’ve already developed an undying loyalty to them, except that I’ve to ditch Brut and Montagut because they’re no longer available in the market.

How did Magnolia and Dove do it? How about my three first bosses who influenced me a lot in pursuing a lifetime career in HR? How did these two major consumer brands and three management personalities in my corporate life swayed me? And of course, how about my seamstress mother and government employee father motivated me to do what’s best for me?

Simply put, “imprinting” played an important role in molding my character. My parents did it until my high school days until I moved to Manila to become an independent working student. When I got a permanent job, the molding series were done by my corporate bosses with some punctuated help from my Japanese management sensei and various business editors from Business World, The Manila Times, and now TV5.

As the trite saying goes on-the rest is history.

The point is that my initial impression about people management, no matter how it helped me financed the education of my three children, was not exactly favorable. I wish I could have become an entrepreneur, and not a corporate guy. Fortunately, as I grew older my intellectual horizons broadened, and I am no longer a bibingka (rice cake) receiving stern instructions from my bosses and various complaints from employee unions.

I also started to like horror movies. From these I learned that management is not just a weird occupational hazard that is for some reason under almost constant attack by giant mutated creatures, like the once-famous Godzilla. Actually, I don’t think there are many important mechanical differences between employment and entrepreneurship.

The only probably difference is styling. Every now and then, corporate management would come out with new buzzwords to justify having more cost-saving strategies like hiring a bigger number of contractual workers than the year before.

While with entrepreneurship, you can make do with family members, with some help coming from the kasambahay (domestic helpers). Then the question comes to mind, who has become a monkey?

Rey Elbo is a business consultant specializing in human resources and total quality management as a fused interest. Send feedback to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or follow Rey Elbo on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.