Today we focus on Pattern #4 from The Way Life Works: Life Uses a Few Themes to Generate Many Variations
In all the beauty and vast diversity of life, it is important to remember that all of it, from the smallest living organism to the largest mammals on earth, is based on a few simple themes. Be still for a moment and look around. What do you see? Concentric rings (like in a spider web or a tree trunk), or spirals (as in sea shells or animals horns), branches (in trees or in the multiple legs of insects). If you look closely enough, you will see similar patterns in all things. As Hoagland notes: “From a few notes, nature creates many symphonies.”
So as leaders, how can we apply this conceptually simple principle?
- Establish simple rules, which can be used in several contexts to produce great variety (eg: as Zingerman’s has done with food and service, General Electric with electricity.)
- Be a jazz player, not a symphony conductor. Allow yourself to creatively play off your organization‘s themes, to develop new ideas which fit our world of work and technology. (Google and Apple are both examples of organizations that have built upon a simple principle of design to develop a variety of products which have changed our world.)
- Spend ample time exploring, tinkering, playing, and just generally farting around…. and do so with other similarly many people. (Think of Johnny Carson, Walt Disney, and the crew of Saturday Night Live)
- Remember the Beatles and the beetles. The music group, which built upon a few themes- some old and some new- to become the most successful, joyous, and enduring bands of all time. And what about the beetles? According to Hoagland: “the beetle, with some 300,000 separate species (the world’s most numerous order), displays every imaginable color, decorative motifs, and proportional distribution of body parts- yet the pattern of relationships that makes the species all beetles is constant.”
- Next time you look at a baby, marvel at how each individual child is a living example of how a few themes generate many variations.
This is my fourth Dr. Rob on the topic of leadership and life science, I am interested in your feedback. Are you enjoying these and hoping that I will continue with this theme?