Humans can learn from animals and professional photographers how to apply Strategy

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 114

We are all decent photographers nowadays, given how easy it is to use a smartphone and take pictures that are well lit and in focus. But then there are the professional photographers. On a professional photograph, only the key object is in focus, while the background is unfocused, even blurred.

The same principle applies to strategy. The real strategist focuses on one thing, to the exclusion of everything else. "Strategy is what you don't do" - says Michael Porter, the creator of the Five Forces model in strategy. The blurred background is where all the elements of "what you don't do" blend in.

Animals are micro-strategists: they prioritise and focus on doing one thing at a time: eating, drinking, hunting or escaping a predator. Perhaps this is because they don't have the mental capacity to do more than one thing. Or perhaps they only live in the present and for the present as they don't understand abstract concepts like the future.

Humans, on the other hand, with our larger mental capacity, can live in the past, present and future at the same time and end up preoccupied with multiple objectives. Picking one thing to do and focusing on doing it well is very difficult. Yet "simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" - says Leonardo da Vinci.

Focus in Photography (Source: Wikipedia)

How long should you work for a company or brew a cup of tea? "Not too long" is the right answer

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 113

This piece of science is shocking: if you keep the tea bag in a cup of hot water longer than 5 minutes, your tea will start getting weaker. "Steep Tea for a Short Time to Get More Caffeine" seems to be the scientific advice to tea drinkers who like their tea strong. If you keep infusing the tea bag, compounds called thearubigins start to seep out and bind to the caffeine, which weakens the tea.

Have you noticed that the same principle applies to employees who stay too long with the same company? When you start a new job, everything is novel, challenging and interesting. After a few years, you start working on "auto pilot": the enthusiasm fizzles out and boredom wades in.

What is the ideal duration then? Five minutes for a cup of tea, five years for a human employee, perhaps?

Tea bag (Source: Wikipedia)

How to win against rip currents and Asian competitors? - Differentiate and specialise!

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 112

How do you escape a rip current at sea? Never swim straight back towards the beach and directly against the rip. Instead, swim sideways along the beach for 100 metres and then head towards land. Rip currents are narrow flows and should be avoided, not fought.

The same is true of global trends. If you are a western company or university, there is no point in fighting against the rise of Asian competitors. Instead, simply do things differently. If you have just fallen out of the Global Top 100 because five more Chinese entities have entered the ranking and displaced you, don't just fight back head on, on all fronts. Instead, decide in which direction you can differentiate and specialise, and focus on cornering the market in that particular field. It is unlikely that you will have to make a choice between more than two possible ways forward. 

Isn't this just like at a beach with a rip current: all you need to do is swim along the beach either to one side, or to the other.

Rip current diagram (Source: Wikipedia)

Humans may have been forced to walk on two feet; Entrepreneurs are often pushed to launch a startup

By George ILIEV

CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 111

In evolution, we are often told that our human ancestors in Africa chose to go down from the trees and venture into the savannah walking on two feet. Recent research shows they may not have had a choice when the forest cover on the continent started disappearing 2-3 million years ago.

Similarly, many entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs not by choice but out of necessity: after conflict in the workplace, losing their job, or out of frustration with their current job.

When push comes to shove, the entrepreneurs simply pick up the shovel.

Man with shovel (Source: Wikipedia)

Note: The research quoted is from The Economist, May 30, 2019: Human beings may owe their existence to nearby supernovas. Cosmic rays from them would have changed the world’s vegetation.

Is your career a bird cage or a shark cage?

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 110

A career builds two cages around you: a bird cage and a shark cage. You may think that a bird cage sounds better than a shark cage but think about it:

The bird cage limits you: from soaring in the sky.

The shark cage protects you: from being eaten by the sharks outside.

The two cages usually come in a package. But do you have any influence on how much of your cage will be a bird cage or a shark cage?

Shark cage (Source: Wikipedia)

Scratching around a mosquito bite is the English way of avoiding confrontation

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 109

What is the best way to scratch a mosquito bite? Scratching the bite right in the middle will make it even bigger and more sore and itchy. What you can do instead is scratch in a circle around the bite with the tip of a pen or pencil. Miraculously, you would get the same relief from the scratching without exacerbating the soreness of the bite itself, as the signals fed to your brain by the touch receptors on the skin do not tell apart two points of pressure if they are less than 1 cm away from each other (apart from on the face, hands and feet). Basically that's what I call "to beat around the bush."

Metaphorically, the rule "always scratch a mosquito bite indirectly" directly applies to the English. The English typically avoid direct confrontation, probably as a vestige of a class society (could the butler contradict his master?) that only started to change after World War 2. With great elegance, the English manage to communicate what they want and pursue their interest in a polite and non-confrontation way. English corporate culture is also notorious for people "sitting on the fence": why get into a fight or take sides if your vital interests are not at stake (as is the case most of the time).

This can also explain why Brexit has spiralled into such a nightmare: it is a major divergence from the English way of doing things. The English are simply in terra incognita in the bust-up with Brussels.

If you don't believe me about English culture, read "Watching the English" by anthropologist Kate Fox. As for the mosquito bite, try it on your skin next time you spot one.

Insect bite (Source: Wikipedia)

Fainting helps humans regain consciousness; Administration helps companies avoid bankruptcy

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 108

If you faint, you fall to the ground. Fainting is usually caused by insufficient blood flow to the brain (e.g. from low blood pressure), so when you inadvertently assume a horizontal position, this naturally increases the blood pressure in the head and leads to regaining consciousness. Thus fainting becomes a self-stabilising or auto-correcting mechanism.

In a similar way, when a company goes into administration (or Chapter 11 in the USA), it is given some protection from creditors as a last-ditch attempt to recover from past losses and avoid bankruptcy. General Motors and Chrysler both went into Chapter 11 in 2009 but subsequently recovered. So did Delta Air Lines (2005) and United Airlines (2002). Let's see if the forthcoming metaphorical fainting (administration) of British Steel will save the company.

Fainting (Source: Wikipedia)

Cats and customer segments sometimes never meet or intersect

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 107

Google Streetview recently took a photo of a cat jumping over the wall into the back yard of our house. It was a tabby cat I had never seen before. I knew the other two black and white cats that stroll in our garden but I didn't know about this one. I asked cat experts and it turns out cats are territorial so in areas densely populated with cats, they share space by agreeing on "usage rights" of the same space at different times of day for the different cats. In this way, the cats that share our garden never meet - but they know and respect each other's visitation hours. 

Customer segments can be similar to cats: if your company has a product that sells to different audiences, these audiences may be so different that they don't intersect at all. For example, Apple iPhones are bought by trendy young people who want to have the latest technology as well as by chief executives who appreciate the convenience of the phone and its security features.

The tabby cat I had not seen before was always coming in the late morning when I am away. Google Streetview let the cat out of the bag.

Tabby cat (Source: Wikipedia)

Buildings on bedrock or sand need foundations of different depth. So does a tower of knowledge

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 106

Do you need to have read Karl Marx in the original to be knowledgeable about Marxism? Or can you rely on the analyses of Marx by other authors as a shortcut?

This is like the foundations of buildings: buildings in New York City rest on granite, as this is the bedrock underneath the city; while the foundations of buildings in Shanghai rest on alluvial mud and sand.

Both types of buildings can be stable. The only difference is that when you are building on granite, you need fairly shallow foundations; while building on mud requires deep foundations. Monopile foundations for wind turbines in offshore areas sometimes go down 25 meters deep under the seabed.

Similarly, you knowledge of Marx (or Aristotle, or anyone else for that matter) can be based directly on their works only (like a building on granite) or it can be derived from other people's works on Marx (like a building on mud and sand). However, if you are relying on others, you need to dig deeper and cover a variety of sources. Otherwise your foundations may turn out shallow and your "tower of knowledge" may collapse.

Building foundations (Source: Wikipedia)

"Superficial" is the word that unites oil slicks and Kim Kardashians

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 105

I recently attended a new book presentation on the management principles behind Kim Kardashian's success. I wasn't quite convinced in the validity of all those principles but I came up with an apt metaphor for Kim Kardashian instead: "superficial as an oil slick". 

An oil slick resonates with many modern social media stars and gurus in more than one way: 
a) it is thin in substance and floats on the surface;
b) it is mesmerisingly colourful;
c) it keeps changing colours, so it can keep you entertained.

Next time if I have a choice, instead of watching slides about Kim Kardashian, I'll just go outside and watch an oil slick in a puddle. I guess I'll learn a lot from the puddle.

Presentation of The Kim Kardashian Principle (Istanbul, May 2019)

A glass exists to hold water. A company exists to serve its customers

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 104

A glass full of water is a container that makes a valuable liquid useful and accessible. Sometimes people collect glasses for the sake of the glasses themselves, e.g. to put them in a display cabinet of Waterford Crystal. But most of the time glasses, cups and pots exist to serve a higher and more useful purpose.

Metaphorically, companies are glasses and cups while their business activities are the useful liquid they contain inside. 

Before the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, most economists agreed with Milton Friedman's 1970s theory that companies exist for their shareholders. Back then, the key objective of a company was seen as generating shareholder returns, which was akin to believing that a glass exists for its own sake.

However, ever since the 1970s, Peter Drucker, the father of management, has maintained that companies do not exist for their shareholders but for their customers, so the primary objective of a company is to be useful to its customers. This is akin to maintaining that the glass exists to hold a liquid.

The financial crisis has ultimately shown that Milton Friedman was wrong and Peter Drucker was right: the glass exists for the liquid inside, not for the melted and strangely-shaped quartz that makes up the glass itself.

Glass of water (Source: Wikipedia)

Toothpaste flows out of the tube only one way. So does Brexit!

By George ILIEV

CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 102 (Originally published on May 15, 2019; republished on May 17, 2019.)

British astronomer Arthur Eddington developed in 1927 the concept of "the arrow of time": time only flows in one direction. In this it resembles toothpaste and Brexit.

The Brexit process is like squeezing toothpaste out of a tube. Once the toothpaste has come out, it can never go back in again. Similarly, if Britain leaves the EU, it will never be able to re-join the EU again.

No other EU member state fits the toothpaste metaphor better than Britain. That's because no other EU member state has obtained so many opt-outs from EU policies over the decades. Britain also gets the proverbial "budget rebate" from the EU each year, thanks to Margaret Thatcher's tough negotiating and her "handbag". If Britain were to leave and reapply for EU membership later, it wouldn't get those exemptions, which would push the EU accession terms beyond the line that the independence-minded British political class would find acceptable.

However, there is one more twist to the toothpaste metaphor. What happens to toothpaste that has come out of the tube? In most cases it is spat out and washed down the sink. 

Toothpaste (Source: Wikipedia)

Sleep is essential for productivity as breathing in is crucial for opera singing

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 103

Opera singers do their singing when they are breathing out. But even the most accomplished ones still need to breathe in, even if briefly and inconspicuously. 

Similarly, top executives often claim to be able to work long hours and get by on very little sleep. But that’s usually not the full story. They may have big lungs but they will only breathe out as much air as they have breathed in. Rest is not merely “the rest”. Rest determines productivity. 

Napoleon supposedly once said about sleep: “Six hours for a man, seven for a woman, eight for a fool.” This was not only politically incorrect but also wrong. 

Singer (Source: Wikipedia)

How much can you remove from the school curriculum before the Jenga tower collapses

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 101

In the age of Google you don't need to know things any more, supposedly. Why memorise facts when you can google them? However, removing the memorising of knowledge from the school curriculum (and cancelling homework) is like playing Jenga Towers: how many bricks/blocks can you remove before it all collapses?

Clearly some Jenga towers with symmetrical holes are airy and beautiful. While solid siloed blocks without variation of the vertical layout pattern are unstable (rote learning). Yet, unless you start using an entirely different and novel material (e.g. composite or carbon fibre), you cannot reduce the number of bricks by more than 50%.

Woe betide those who learn too little, as their Jenga tower is bound to collapse. While the Tower of Babel collapsed because there was too much in it (diversity of languages), the Jenga of knowledge collapses when there is too little in it.

Jenga Tower (Source: Wikipedia)

Global cultures divide into two types: coconuts and peaches

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 100

The population of most countries falls into one of two cultural categories: coconuts or peaches, according to culture experts. Coconuts (e.g. Germans or Russians) are hard on the outside but soft on the inside: not warm and friendly on the surface, but they open up and turn soft once they get to know you. Peaches, on the other hand, are soft on the outside but with a hard stone on the inside: on the surface Brits are polite and smile a lot, but have a closed off inner circle of friends. If a Brit tells you "you should come over for dinner sometime", this is merely them being polite and does not imply an invitation at all. (It becomes an invitation only if the day and the time are specified.)

Yet, cultures evolve. Over the course of history, coconuts have been selected by humans not for larger size but for thinner shells. As a result, through selective breeding generation after generation, coconuts nowadays have much thinner husks than millennia ago. Similarly, "coconut" cultures are getting less intimidating upon first encounter: hanging out with the Dutch is good fun nowadays.

Might there be a similar process of evolution for peaches? - Not necessarily, because the peach stone is not useful for humans. However, if we used apricots rather than peaches as the metaphor, we might be able to observe some evolution of the stone inside over the centuries, as apricots have an edible kernel in the middle of the stone (peaches don't).

It may sound like a communist slogan but it seems to be the case that globalisation is driving this process forward:
Coconuts and peaches of the world, unite!

Coconut (Source: Wikipedia)

Revolutions are like ploughing

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 99

Revolutions are like ploughing: the bottom layer comes to the top and the top goes to the bottom.

“The last will be first, and the first last.” (Matthew 20:16)

Plough (Source: Wikipedia)

Entrepreneurship is about relentless execution: like grinding a hot poker into a pin

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 98

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself" - George Bernard Shaw said. This highlights the imporant distinction between thinking and doing. 

Many people believe the key to success in entrepreneurship is coming up with a great idea: a sesame seed that you find after sifting through tonnes of hay. The sesame seed (or a poppy seed) is also at the centre of PhD dissertations, as doctoral students are discouraged by their supervisors from taking on too big a topic. 

A tiny novel idea may be deemed enough in academia. Yet, the metaphor about the sesame seed is far from sufficient in entrepreneurship. The success of a startup is not that dependent on the sesame seed. A more useful metaphor for running a startup is grinding down a hot poker into a pin. In simple terms, execution trumps ideation.

Startup guru Guy Kawasaki demonstrates the importance of execution for a startup with the following scale:

• An idea is worth 1 point;
• A business plan is worth 10 points;
• A developed product is worth 100 points;
• And the first customer is worth 1,000 points

Relentless execution is the key for hammering the hot poker into a pin. The heat makes the poker tricky to handle but also makes it malleable: strike while the iron is hot. The only thing worse than a hot poker is a cold poker, as grinding a cold poker into a pin would be way more difficult. 

How would you know if your startup is a hot or a cold poker in its base? Hot pokers change their shape after each strike of the hammer - a process known as iteration. Cold pokers don't iterate and as a result they end up as cold pokers, just as they started... whereas many of the hot pokers will eventually turn into pins.

Pin (Source: Wikipedia)

Rivers erode mountains and fertilise plains; Humans build and apply knowledge

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 97

Rivers erode mountains upstream and deposit the eroded grains of sand and silt downstream, fertilising the plains. Similarly, people accumulate grains of knowledge when younger and integrate and apply this knowledge when they get older, creating "rivers of knowledge".

What is the ideal amount of knowledge one needs - to go through life and leave a mark? 

Let's start with the minimum amount: this would be a short and slow-running river that starts in the plains and simply doesn't erode anything or deposit anything. 

What would be too much then? Possibly a long river like the Yellow River in China (Huang He) which erodes huge amounts of loess upstream and then floods the plains with alluvial silt - so much so that historically it often formed a viaduct of silt above the level of the plains and when, sooner or later, it would break these natural levees, it would flood the plains and drown hundreds of thousands. This type of river in the human world are some philosophers: people with extraordinary depth, yet unable to communicate with and be understood by the ordinary people around them.

The ideal "river of knowledge" is probably the Nile: a long river that accumulates silt and fertilises the desert. Unlike the dreaded floods of the Yellow River, the flooding of the Nile was welcomed and treasured by the ancient Egyptians - so much so that they built their calendar around this annual event.

The Yellow River at Hukou Falls (Source: Wikipedia)

Animals can be more or less employed - just like humans

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 96

Muhammad Yunus, the founder of microfinance and Nobel Peace Prize winner, once asked a question during a talk: "Have you seen an unemployed animal?" His point was everybody deserves a livelihood and it is simply human nature to find employment by being entrepreneurial. 

Yet, employment in animals comes in different shades and sizes. Herbivores that depend on grazing low-calorie cellulose-heavy plants such as grass (antelopes) or bamboo (pandas) spend most of their day eating or ruminating. While predators spend only a small percentage of their time eating, as they eat high-calorie meat; yet they dedicate the majority of their time recovering from unsuccessful hunting sallies.

The animal spectrum resembles the hunter-gatherer societies of early humans: the gatherers were the herbivores, looking for lower-calorie plants; while the hunters were the predators attempting the occasional high-calorie kill.

Similarly, the risk profile of entrepreneurs determines to a degree the characteristics of their startups: more risk-averse entrepreneurs focus on businesses that can generate stable (even if small) cash flows, while the less risk-averse ones may work on an idea for years without pay (sometimes even a decade) in order to build up a business and sell it.

So, unemployed animals don't exist, but variably-employed animals do!

San tribesman from Namibia (Source: Wikipedia)

Public universities are elephants; Private universities are lions

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 95

Big public universities are large herbivores: elephants, rhinos and hippos. They are slow(ish) but powerful and as a result are safe and well-established in their local environment.

For-profit universities are predators: lions, tigers and leopards. They punch above their weight (pound for pound) as their aggressive nature makes them more visible, with their much bigger marketing spend. They cannot kill the largest herbivores but they feast on medium-sized and smaller ones: zebras, antelopes and gazelles (i.e. outcompeting local universities and community colleges).

If elephants were more aggressive, they would be a formidable force in the savannah. But they rarely are, which leaves significant space for predators to mark as their territory. This goes along with the saying: "Public universities don't sell well what they do. Private universities often sell well what they don't do."

African elephant (Source: Wikipedia)

Rankings are a bamboo forest; Consulting is a vineyard

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 94

When you create a ranking for an industry, you are growing a bamboo forest: visible from afar but with shallow roots. Botanically the bamboo is a grass and its roots reach down only a metre under ground. Similarly, rankings do not change the ground underneath: they just increase the visibility of the status quo, like bamboos that create a leafy cover on top of a mountain slope.

On the other hand, when you offer a consultancy service to an industry, you are planting a vineyard, as vine roots reach up to 10 metres deep. What is key in consulting is that it produces recommendations for improvement - the essence of a long and structured process - just as the vines produce grapes based on the richness of the soil.

Bamboo (Source: Wikipedia)

Efficiency leads to displacement: in plant crops and in industries

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 93

Efficiency leads to displacement. In agriculture, sugar cane is more efficient than sugar beet in capturing the sun's energy and storing it as sugar, so the bulk of sugar produced in the world is now cane sugar. Similarly, the potato is more efficient than turnips in capturing and storing energy as starch, so it has displaced turnips in European agriculture since its introduction from the Americas in the 16th century.

In the industrial world, the Flying Geese Model in East Asian economic development shows industries (production of commoditised goods) being transferred from more advanced to less advanced countries. At some point, the Bangladeshi textile industry or the Chinese chemical industry simply became more efficient than Japan's and Japan found itself unable to compete against them, just like turnips and sugar beet had to give up competing against potatoes and sugar cane.

Flying Geese (Source: Wikipedia)