This is a quote repeated hundred times, attributed to hundred people, reproduced in hundred posters and that you can find in multiple of hundreds Google search. Yet, a great quote!
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you’d better be running
It’s a good story, a good metaphor, a good parable.
Unless you know about lions and Africa.
This is a in-passing comment from one of the multiple sites where the ubiquitous quote dwells digitally.
I’m no expert, but I am from Africa and it’s a known fact that lions hunt mostly between dusk and dawn. If this was in fact a quote by an African, he was not well informed or connected with his heritage.
Ooops!
Here in Britain we have started the frenzy of the upcoming General Election. Rhetoric trumps facts. Spin outplays reality. It’s a game of cleverness over substance, of cooked messages over spontaneity. It’s a wonderful world. In this world, many people will declare themselves lions experts even if they have never seen a lion, hunters connoisseurs even if they have never gone hunting, gazelle authorities even if they can’t distinguish a gazelle from a rhino. Until somebody shouts: excuse me, do lions not hunt at dusk?
In our organizational world we have similar Expert Pontifications on management by management consultants who have never managed any company, by leadership experts who have never led an organization, by advisers whose sole merit is the title in the business card, by entrepreneurs coaches whose only entrepreneur track record is on getting aspiring entrepreneurs into a seminar.
Excuse me, do lions not hunt at dusk?