competition

Are you creating the space in your organisation for creativity and anticipation of the future – imagining as many possible scenarios as you can to build a bold new future? Listening to those idealists, visionaries, dreamers, thinkers who share how trends are developing?

“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
Red Queen, Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll 1871

I remember in my molecular genetics in biotechnology degree many years ago learning about the “Red Queen Hypothesis”. This is used in evolutionary biology to describe how organisms interact in a continuous “arms race” of defence and counter-defence mechanisms. It was called “Red Queen” based on the above quote from the red queen in Lewis Carroll’s book. Now that I have spent 15+ years in business after leaving academic science both on the management consulting side and in the industry – it is very much how business likes to behave. Constant competition both within the organisation (employees, projects, business units, etc) and also outside against other companies (competitors, substitutes, supplier, customers, etc). A lot of running fast to get more efficient and performing in what they already do well, that is known ways of doing business.

Here is the thing though. Today more than ever, we have a good understanding that all this competition against each other is not really going to solve the problems we jointly share – around inequality, climate change, human and planetary wellbeing. Those Dennis Meadows named “Difficult, global problems”. Similarly it leads to a very narrow perspective – the busyness of running to keep still is distracting from real disruptive change. So is it time to shift away from running fast only to keep in the same place?

“Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast”
White Queen, Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll 1871

Inspired by the proposition from Eric Muraille in his paper “Diversity Generator Mechanisms Are Essential Components of Biological Systems: The Two Queen Hypothesis” (2018) I would like to extend his thinking around the other queen, the White Queen, towards businesses as a concept.

My reasons for this?

We have difficult, global problems to solve – it requires bold (impossible) thinking
It is time to anticipate how our future can look – have the courage to imagine outside of what we already do
The White Queen is described as child-like – it will require playfulness, curiosity, the right brain

We jointly have one planet. Let us anticipate (at least) six impossible futures that involve courageous, compassionate and collaborative ways of doing business and living.

How to start? Stop running like a Red Queen – make space for long-term thinking, playing, curiosity and reimagining. It might be a little scary to stop running – as there are multiple factors why we tend to stay on that treadmill as I wrote about here – yet there are skills you can learn so you land softly when you bounce of that treadmill and into being.

Sources:

Muraille E (2018) Diversity Generator Mechanisms Are Essential Components of Biological Systems: The Two Queen Hypothesis. Front. Microbiol. 9:223. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2018.00223
Escaping the Red Queen Effect in Competitive Strategy: Sense-testing Business Models. European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 37–49, February 2005

There are three important elements required to reimagine our systems and business models:

Daring Leadership
Abundance Mindset
Collaborative Narrative

In this post I dig in to the term ‘Collaborative Narrative’ and why I believe it is important at the individual leader level, and also at a cultural level for our societies and organisations.

I had the pleasure to participate in a Story DoJo session hosted by Mary Alice Arthur, in which she explored the topic of story and power with the author Annette Simmons. Annette Simmons has a new book coming out this October, which is on my ‘to-read’ list and I am looking forward to. In the Story DoJo session Annette Simmons shared her theory around ‘competitive narrative’ and a ‘collaborative narrative’.

In our societies and businesses we have been operating in an environment with armored leadership, scarcity-fuelled anxieties and predominantly competitive narratives. Competitive narratives mean the messages and stories we are sent are “you always have to be better than others”, “it’s all about winning”, “perfectionism, exhaustion are signs your are committed”. For example one of the latest McKinsey Email Newsletters in my inbox headlined “Can your company stay competitive if it focuses only on what it’s good at today?” – Source McKinsey Daily Read Newsletter 24 July 2021.

If we are looking to shift to new systems and business models with daring leadership and a mindset of abundance, than we require new stories of success. And new stories of success have to support new ways to measure success, it cannot be about profit alone and it cannot be with a singular view on the organisation. It has to be a wholistic view with benefit to the organisation and within the external environment. This would mean the organisation is successful if it is contributing to better wellbeing and a healthier planet for us all. We need system thinkers and ecologists to work with the economists on building these narratives.

With the current ongoing focus on ‘Purpose’ – I am convinced that what people are looking for is how their organisation belongs within the ecosystem of our society and planet. It is our right-brains inherent understanding of the interconnectedness of everything and an increasing demand for this belonging to be made very explicit. This is a key part of a Collaborative Narrative – what is our organisation’s (and thus our employee’s) role within our system to create wellbeing for all?

Some questions to ponder on:

The famous ‘Hero’s Journey’ – how do we make one that is collaborative?
What stories do you read and see in your go to sites for information? Are they competitive or collaborative in nature?
How do we change and agree upon what we measure as success?
Here I talk about a ‘Collaborative Narrative’ – it is about collaboration and cooperation, right?

Source: You can find more information on the work about the power of stories by Annette Simmons here.

Category: competition

What a Red Queen and a White Queen might tell us about about business

Collaborative narrative – it all starts with a story, and we need stories where we succeed by working with each other not against each other