This morning went I went for a walk on the beach I found a large number of dead birds. These were muttonbirds that had been washed in on the tide.
This is an annual problem, as you will see if you click though to the news item linked to the picture. These little birds are migrating from the Aleutian Islands (Russian Arctic circle) to southern Australia – via California. No wonder they get so tired that they just fall out of the sky and die.
Herd or flock mentalities are another form of blind conformance – in this case I guess it is also the result of a natural instinct. A bit like following the latest BC/Risk trend without actually thinking about it – it is a programmed instinct in the corporate world (nobody ever got fired for following a major standard).
Not everybody in the flock will survive – be resilient in the organisational context. Perhaps this is a form of ‘Risk Darwinism’ – what you might call “survival of the fittest”?
Of course the answer is ‘yes’. But we would need to understand the correct context for the ‘fittest’.
The term “survival of the fittest” does not come from Charles Darwin but from a Sociologist named Herbert Spencer. Spencer coined this term after reading and writing about Darwin’s “On the Origin of the Species”. Spencer was concerned with social evolution – the term is not about physical fitness but about about better fit (or adaptation) to the current environment.
Adaptive Capacity is a critical measure of a person or organisation’s resilience. You cannot adapt in a herd – those who have the capacity to adapt tend to stand out from the crowd.
Resilience = survival of the most adaptive, not the physically fittest and strongest (as in the most robust).
Where is the Risk/BC flock heading this season?
Are you part of the flock, or thinking and acting differently?
Leave a Reply