Nature Will Find A Way

I mentioned last week that we spent a few days in Rhode Island last week for the Jack Morton officers meeting.
(Note to all, live meetings to align key stakeholders behind a mission really work: see driver for details.)
One of the highlights of the packed agenda was a three-hour seminar led by Scott A. Snook, an Associate Professor at Harvard Business School. .
In a broad-ranging presentation, Scott addressed a number of guiding principles for leadership, using talking points from his military career, college sports and popular culture.
One particularly memorable section was based on ‘learnings from Jurassic Park’ – which applied elements of chaos theory to the principles of change management.
Still with me?
Good.
Anyway, by focusing on the film rather than the novel by Michael Crichton,
Scott missed my favourite anecdotes from the story.
In the book, our intrepid heroes are shown around the laboratory where the dinosaurs are bred and genetically manipulated.
The scientist in charge of the process points out that all the dinosaurs are bred to be female so that there will be no unauthorised breeding on the island.
The ‘chaotician’ Ian Malcolm (played in the film by Jeff Goldblum) gravely warns that
“nature will find a way”.
And of course it does.
When it later emerges that the dinosaurs have been spontaneously changing sex in order to reproduce
John Hammond (the park’s incredulous owner) refuses to believe the facts.
He claims that the park’s motion sensors have not detected an increase in the dinosaur population. Several times a day they count all the animals on the island and always find the same number.
Until, of course, someone points out how the system was programmed.
Since nobody ever assumed that the population could grow, the algorithms never allows for any increased numbers.
As soon as the motion sensors located the ‘confirmed’ population, it simply stopped counting.
Meanwhile, the island’s prehistoric inhabitants had steadily been increasing their head-count.
So what does this all mean for business?
Well, if you look at growth strategy, you can learn an interesting lesson from this analogy.
You have to extend your targets if you want to achieve ambitious growth.
Limit your thinking and you’ll never grow the business, you’ll simply maintain the status quo.
Aim for more, beyond the realms of what you ‘know’ to be possible.
Because the business and your capabilities will soon expand to fill the gap.
Just watch out for the velociraptors.