We count animals precisely but humans loosely to guarantee human responses

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 72

When we count the animals in a zoo, we count very precisely and in great detail. For example, the London Zoo counted 19,289 animals in 2018.

When we count humans in a census, we omit a lot of details. For example, the US census conducted every 10 years does not ask for the citizenship of the people who get counted.

The reason for this discrepancy is simply... complexity. Whereas it is us humans who do the counting of the animals, in a census the humans are supposed to count themselves. This may trigger a complex reaction of avoidance in case the incentives for declaring all details are misaligned.

Just like dogs and wolves roll in animal carcasses to mask their scent to be more successful in hunting their prey, so people may try to hide from the census to avoid disclosing information that they find sensitive. Thus, we end up counting humans not with a fine pen but with a broad brush.

Penguins at London Zoo (Source: Wikipedia)

UK needs to choose its Brexit future: dog-into-wolf OR dog-into-dingo

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 69.

Brexit will need to unwind 45 years of economic and legal convergence between Britain and the EU. This is similar to unwinding the genetic evolution of the domesticated dog and turning it back into a wild wolf...or at least into a dingo (a feral dog). Britain's choice of divergence strategies (dog-into-wolf OR dog-into-dingo) is actually not much of a choice. Sadly both come with the stigma of being an outsider to the civilised human world.

The full text of this #BrexitMetaphors blog post can be found here: 

http://brexitmetaphors.blogspot.com/2018/12/dog-wolf-or-dingo.html

Dingo (Source: Wikipedia)

Startup teams behave like packs of wolves. And that's a good thing!

George ILIEV's new TEDx talk explores what wolves, green bananas & bird shit can teach us about ourselves, human society and the corporate world:

In brief:

1. Wolves epitomise startup culture: teamwork and sharing. While dogs are a metaphor for corporate culture: hierarchy, domination and submission.

2. Fruit ripening is like lifelong learning. Some people keep learning new skills over their lifetime, just as some fruit (bananas, apples, mangoes) keep ripening after being picked. Others don't: oranges, strawberries and grapes can ripen no further once detached from the stalk.

3. Investment bankers have something in common with bird excrement. Seeds that go through a bird's digestive system are four times more likely to germinate. Similarly, high-pressure jobs make people resilient and release their full potential.

Think about it next time you have a cup of Kopi Luwak coffee.

For the full stories, watch the TED video.

TEDx Kent talk on wolves, bananas and bird shit

By George ILIEV

The three stories in this 14-minute TED talk draw parallels between:

     1) Packs of wolves and startup culture (vs. dogs and corporate culture);
     2) Green bananas and lifelong learning;
     3) Bird excrement and investment bankers.

Metaphors helps us understand the world better because "only 1/6 of your eyeball faces the outside world."

Do you work in a Wolf or Dog culture?

If you answered the question you probably gave the wrong answer. Startup culture is wolf culture, while dogs revel in “corporate-style” hierarchy.

(By George ILIEV)

The phrase "dog-eat-dog" was coined for a reason. Counterintuitively, dogs do not cooperate among themselves. Wolves do. Dogs dominate or obey each other in a strict hierarchy of submission, whereas wolves are the ones who “discuss” to make group decisions. If you work for a startup, you are likely working in a “wolf culture”, grounded in cooperation and tolerance. If you work at a big corporation, your environment is probably a “dog culture”, based on domination and pecking order.

Photo: Pack of Wolves (Source: Wikimedia)

EXPERIMENT 1: Top dog dominates in "dog-eat-dog" hierarchy

Recent experiments in Austria show that a top dog will monopolise all food and will not let a lower-ranking dog eat from its bowl. A lower-ranking dog would be so intimidated it would not even dare attempt to eat with the top dog. In contrast, the same experiment with wolves shows that both high-ranking and low-ranking pack members share access to the food. There is a simple explanation why dogs have diverged so far from the cooperative nature of wolves. Dogs were bred for their obedience to man, who is seen by the dog as the “top dog”. Humans mistakenly perceive this as cooperation but from the dog’s perspective this is submission, not cooperation. A dog’s true (beige-to-grey) colours shine through when left in a group of its own.

EXPERIMENT 2: Dogs are poor at independent problem-solving

The domestication of the dog, over around 10,000 years of selective breeding, has reinforced the dog’s hierarchical perception of the world and the micro-society of the pack. This appears to impact the dog’s problem-solving skills. Experiments with dogs and wolves show that 80% of wolves manage to open a can of sausages, while no adult dogs manage to achieve this under the same conditions. The exception are dog puppies, who manage to open the can with a similar success rate as the wolves. This shows that the lack of independence in dogs is increased by their cohabitation with humans as puppies grow up.

THREE LESSONS FOR THE BUSINESS WORLD

Lesson 1: Companies are no democracies

The results of the group-feeding experiment bring to mind a well-known fact: No matter how much we praise democracy as the most sophisticated system for ruling a country , corporations are not democracies. Corporations are authoritarian organisations with an established hierarchy, just like an army, a police unit and a pack of dogs.

Lesson 2: Do not confuse submission with cooperation

Corporate executives can learn from the psychology of the dog. Your corporate subordinates might be very cooperative in their interaction with you (their boss), but that does not mean they see themselves as cooperating. Instead, they may be perceiving themselves as Yes-men who have to act submissively. This model may work for subordinates without strong independent thinking but if you want to keep the real problem-solvers working for you, you have to empower them and treat them like wolves treat each other, with a degree of equality. Otherwise your subordinates may leave for a less hierarchical organisation or for a startup.

Lesson 3: Corporations institutionalise their employees

Corporate culture institutionalises its employees just like the human “top-dog” reduces the problem-solving skills of his/her pet as the puppy grows up. Conversely, startup culture encourages problem solving and independent thinking in ways similar to what the wolf experiments show.

Hope at the end of the dog kennel

Let’s not give a dog a (completely) bad name. Corporations come in all shapes and sizes and corporate cultures vary hugely. In a similar way, there is variation among dog breeds: Labrador retrievers and poodles are more hierarchical and aggressive towards lower-ranking pack members than German shepherds are. It may be no coincidence that German shepherds physically resemble wolves much more closely.

In the corporate world, Google and Facebook have a “less-hiearchical” hierarchy than oil and mining giants like ExxonMobil and BHP Billiton. In the end, both Google and Facebook were born as startups 10-15 years ago. Would another 10,000 years of selective breeding change that?

I look forward to your thoughts in the comments below or @GeorgeILIEV