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Code 15 - An ancient evolutionary secret to drive energy in organisations

Leadership
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  Synopsis


Geoffrey West, one of the brightest scientific minds from MIT, has shown us conclusively that every organisation (yes that includes yours) is on a half-life death spiral of just ten years. Bees however offer us a practical solution to this survival challenge. They have found the secret to evolutionary survival by allocating a specific percentage of their resources to continuously exploring new possibilities. I call this Code 15 and it has worked well for bees.

Now Code 15 has been customised to drive strategy, structure, innovation, customer experience and long-term profitability. It has already proved its high-energy potential in cities as varied as Prague, Athens and Johannesburg.

Bees and Code 15 


Bees have survived for 125 million years. They have managed earthquakes, ice ages, and even a cataclysmic planetary collision 65 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs and many other living creatures. And they have survived one million times longer than our modern organisations. In evolutionary terms they are right up there with the Nile crocodile.

Perhaps our organisations can learn something from these remarkable animals.

Our evolutionary challenge

The life of the modern organisation is in an embryonic phase. We now know that all organisations respond to a half-life scale of only ten years. This means that half the new companies formed in 2019 will be dead and buried within ten years and the rest will be gathered by the grim reaper within five decades. (With one or two exceptions.)

Code 15 is the natural, universal, generator of new energy and complexity. It is the polar opposite of entropy. It is the evolutionary algorithm that drives intelligent thinking and intelligent action. Without it human systems simply wilt and die. 

In addition we know that seventy years ago the average S&P company lasted fifty years and now they struggle to survive a blink-of-an-eye twenty years, still declining every day. If Socrates were alive, he would surely declare that all the leaders, politicians and academics share a common trait with regard to organisational survival. They know nothing.

  Short term focus - our gateway to strategic madness

The organisational world is filled with mumbo jumbo from visions and values, to engagement and emotional intelligence, creating an Alice in Wonderland picture of meaning and artificial purpose. However the harsh reality is very different. Every organisation is driven by two forces. Driving economies of scale on the one hand (driving production up and costs down), and managing the shareholder and investor on the other. The former is driven by science and logic and the latter by animal spirits and the 'gambling man'. Unfortunately the latter seems to be more pervasive.

As a result leaders and their management teams spend their time and intellect, not on survival but on continual spiralling-to-the-heavens compound growth. Anybody with a functioning brain knows this is unsustainable. (Even Amazon's Geoff Bizos admitted this in recent weeks).

If the bees, (or any other specie) adopted this suicidal strategy, clearly there would be no bees and no honey. The first lesson for organisations is an obvious one. Long-term survival needs to be strategic goal number one.


What is the bee's survival strategy 


Bees have evolved the biologically optimum survival strategy, which I have named "Code 15". And it can be successfully applied to organisations.

This is how the bees do it.

Hives settle in an area where there is sufficient food. When it is time to move on – scarcity of food, changes in the weather etc – the hive sends out 15% of the bees to find the best new opportunities while the other 85% remain working industriously to keep the hive operating effectively. When the explorers, the mavericks, the innovators find a new pathway (a new source of food) they return to the hive and communicate through a highly complex and evolved dance pattern giving distance, direction and general attractiveness of the potential new investment for the hive.

The moral of this tale is simple. If you keep your 'hive' in the same place hoping to grow and become more profitable in an ever-shrinking and competitive market you are simply deluded. It cannot be done. And if the market cap keeps rising, it is probably due to further misplaced investor enthusiasm. (Ask Facebook, Apple, Bitcoin and even a few not-too-bright politicians who have failed to register that you cannot make a silk purse from a sow's ear.)


After 125 million years bees have learned that allocating 15% of their resources – effectively ring-fencing them from the daily activities – is the key to their long-term survival.
And this is exactly what organisations need to learn to do. Allocate 15% of their time and resources to finding new pathways. As a continuous process and not a discrete event.

Bees understand Lucretius but we don't 

Lucretius the Roman poet, philosopher and deep thinking natural scientist, lived over two thousand years ago in a time of relative freedom from ancient religious dogma and 'thought police.' He wrote De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), a remarkable poem that described the world in his time. Incredibly much of what he wrote could have been written by the finest brains of our modern time.

Amongst his declarations, he stated that life in the universe is a continual flow that follows certain patterns, which every now and again is punctuated by a naturally occurring 'swerve', creating a new pathway and a new direction of evolutionary flow. (Thanks to the superstitious insanity and cruelty of the dogma peddlers it took another two millennia for Darwin to re-invent the concept.)

This describes the evolutionary process as we understand it today. Wherever you have repetition, variation (the swerve) and selection, you must get evolution. This is simply a basic law of life, the universe and everything, right up there with the law of entropy (the loss of energy over time). This means it applies to you, your families and your organisation.

Code 15 is the natural, universal, generator of new energy and complexity. It is the polar opposite of entropy. It is the evolutionary algorithm that drives intelligent thinking and intelligent action. Without it human systems simply wilt and die.


Application of Code 15 in organisations 

Code 15 is essentially a new practical evolutionary philosophy and structured methodology that drives new levels of intelligent thinking and intelligent action in organisations. The basic principles of Code 15 can be applied directly to evolving new high-energy company strategy, company structure, leader and team development, innovation, customer experience, growth and sustainable profitability.

Code 15 has kept the bees alive for 125 million years. If you want your company to survive and evolve in the turbulent 21st Century, Code 15 may just work for you too!

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About the author

John Raddall

John Raddall

 

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