by Montse Lorente
“Bees have to move very fast to stay still.” - David Foster Wallace
The Red Queen Effect was first illustrated in Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland book and it was used by the biologist Leigh Van Valen to explain the “law of extinction”.
The Red Queen Effect means that in order to survive, we need to co-evolve with the system we interact with. For example, female lions need to constantly improve their hunting skills as their prey are also improving their scaping skills. In order to maintain their status quo both need to be in constant change.
If all animals evolved at the same rate, there would be no change in the relative interactions between spieces. However, not all animals evolve at the same rate and that is what determines which species continue existing and thriving.
In the business context, companies need to adapt to their context - e.g. pandemic - change what is needed inside the organization (processes, team, etc.) in order to survive/sell as much as the previous year.
Darwin observed that some species are more “responsive to change” than others. Those who survive are not the strongest but the ones most adaptable to change.
Adaptation is key to survival. We need to understand how the world we live in works so we can better navigate our context and make decisions.
Individuals and organizations that accept change and work around it are the ones most likely to succeed.
Resistance is natural and expected in any change process. Not managing resistance or letting it control and freeze the process is what we want to avoid.
To survive we need to learn how to navigate change.
“The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists.” - Japanese Proverb
“The winds may fell the massive oak tree, but bamboo, bent even to the ground, will spring upright after the passage of the storm.”
Bamboo embraces change from within - at first, it adapts to the environment from its roots, then it grows tall and learns to bend and dance with the wind. On the contrary, the Oak fights the wind standing tall and resisting it. When the wind is too hard, Oaks can break.
Flexibility and adaptation are key competencies to effectively develop resilience. Being resilient is the first step to surfing crisis and succeeding change.
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