Ritualized greetings, such as mouth-licking in wolves or a handshake in humans, are a form of information gathering, and they have evolved among social animals to strengthen bonds and build trust.
Experts believe birds come together in compact masses because grouping together offers safety in numbers from predators, such as falcons. Such predators find it hard to target one bird in the middle of a hypnotising flock of up to thousands. Other reasons for murmurations include include the warmth of a group at night during the winter. They also gather to exchange information, such as good feeding areas. Organisations can learn a lot from such behaviour.
Columbia Business School Professor and corporate consultant Rita McGrath contends that inflection points, though they may seem sudden, are not random.
Sycophants are not wondering what is best for the organisation, they are only interested in what is best for them. If you ask them about for a SWOT analysis of your company product or opportunities for disruption, they will spout some generic nonsense. However, ask them about section 2, article 3c, paragraph 2 of the company handbook and they will recite it to the letter. In essence, they know how to survive in an organisation all the way to pension, riding on the coattails of those in power.
One of the challenges that so many organisations and individuals face is that we have grown accustomed to a steady and stable environment. The relative stability of the post-war period, an anomalous period in world history, has somewhat contributed to our conditioning for stability. As a result, our mental and operational flexibility has atrophied. Progress and change only happen when we adapt, when we permanent reinvent, when we understand that chaos and order are bedfellows.
This episode is about getting to grips with how to actually change your behaviour so you stay curious a little bit longer.
Author of The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever, Michael Bungay Stanier tells us how.
Swiss cheese Model for Ideas Aidan McCullen. Have you noticed a colleague who was once full of ideas, who has gone unusually quiet? Perhaps you may assume they are just disinterested? You may think they are having a bad day? Perhaps instead, they have fallen prey to a corporate lobotomy? Perhaps they are worn down? Perhaps they just couldn’t be bothered any more.
No matter your business or your position, you can apply his approach to create a workplace where everyone takes responsibility for their actions, people are healthier and happier – and everyone is a leader.
We were all impacted in various ways in 2020, but just as bruises result in scar tissue, which is thicker than normal tissue, setbacks can result in resilience if we change how we perceive them. C.S. Lewis puts it beautifully, “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”
When we are experiencing chaos, it can be all encompassing, we can forget that there is order ahead. Our guest on Innovation Show 253 is John Rogers, John reminds us that the devastation of the “Black Death” was the chaos that preceded the Renaissance.