Why Evolve When Knuckle Walking Is More Efficient

"Our philosophy is: keep it simple. Keep the arms long, the cerebral cortexes small and let those knuckles drag along the ground as God meant them to. Never take steps to change anything about your business until creditors are about to close your doors."

By Andy the Ape

First my credentials: I’m an orangutan. Most of you have worked for one of my relatives at one time or another. I’m sure you have met some of us in the consulting world as well and if you run a business, you undoubtedly employ us from time to time. We don’t believe in flashy new trends like upright walking, advanced tool making or the internet. All this stuff comes and goes, so why invest your best bananas developing it?

We firmly believe the tried and true concepts of the prehistoric world are best. However, in business we have had to make some concessions to the modern world. And whatever our line of business, we know it would be an affront to the founders of our industry to ever change anything about it. That’s why we never come up with anything new and stand ready to attack anyone who does. We just do what has always been done. And if hoity-toity managers order us to do something "out of the box" (as they describe it,) we just pretend we are "team players" and go about doing what we have always done.

We get a kick out of sabotaging any attempt by anyone to change anything. Plus, we’ve been doing this a long time and we are good at it. This is the true essence of "monkey business" and we take pride in our lower primate heritage.

As a result we have spent a few million years swinging from trees and mucking about the jungle in our birthday suites while you homo sapiens have driven costs up frantically in just a few thousand years with this ill-conceived rapid evolution policy. Damn that Darwin! No one would have ever known if he just kept quiet about it.

And where has it led humanity? Okay, your species has attained a fancier Latin title and world domination while we humble subordinates of the primate world sit here quite contentedly on the brink of extinction. I’m afraid we never evolved enough intelligence to notice we are becoming extinct. Some say that’s our problem. So we just go about our business as we always have helping to destroy to our own companies. But even in the worst of times, we always know how to say comforting things to senior management to assuage their anxieties. And they often like us for that. But that’s beside the point. Everyone knows larger craniums lead to larger cost structures that rarely pay off in the long run. That’s where we apes must keep the faith in our total rejection of evolution and change.

Our philosophy is: keep it simple. Keep the arms long, the cerebral cortexes small and let those knuckles drag along the ground as God meant them to. Never take steps to change anything about your business until creditors are about to close your doors. By that time it’s probably too late to do anything. But take contentment with the fact you held true to your lower primate values. We all have a lower primate within us we need to embrace from time to time. I know it can be challenging for you higher primate types to embrace your lower primate self, but a good start is to never accept change you’re just not cozy with and for God’s sake don’t ever question it. That wise motto has guided us absolutely nowhere for millions of years and we’re proud of that. If something is different and we’ve never done it that way before, there must be something wrong with it – right? That’s how a lower primate evaluates everything. Just keep swinging from the trees baby and don’t look back. It’s always been a jungle out there and it always will be – and I mean literally if you’re one of us!

My ancestors knew you humans were losing it the moment we saw you wasting valuable time and energy slamming rocks together to fashion axes, spears and other trendy stone tools we knew would never catch on. This unauthorized procedure was completely overlooked by management and started a costly natural selection process that changed our world forever. It makes me sick just thinking about the incredible waste of investment capital that could have been used to keep us hooting about in the forest for a few million years. Why couldn’t that uppity ape just be satisfied being an ape. Just picking up a hard round rock and throwing it was good enough for us and it should have been good enough for him. First stone tools, then this bronze age business and the next thing you knew, human kids were wasting valuable time playing video games. Let’s get down to basics and spend our leisure time picking bugs off each other like the good old days on the savannah. If the ice ages hadn’t complicated things, we’d all still be doing it that way.

So if you are being overwhelmed by rapid change confronting your business, whether it be new technologies, innovative competitors or economic challenges never before encountered, rather than hire forward-thinking experts who may actually assist you in evolving with the changing business climate so your business can survive, I highly recommend you hire an orangutan as a consultant simply to give the impression you are taking action when you are really doing absolutely nothing at all. This will not save your business, but your lower primate within will feel wonderful in the face of extinction!

Business Insider Magazine completely disavows itself from any suggestions offered by Andy the Ape and if you need to read a disclaimer to understand this column is a spoof you are completely beyond help. If after reading this column, you suspect there are orangutans working for your organization, you are probably right. If you suspect you could be an orangutan, you probably are. Bananas anyone?