Shortlist Digest: The Wisdom of Fish

Originally appeared in the monthly Shortlist Digest here: https://mailchi.mp/b35b254ee709/shortlist-digest-december-1795401?e=cf6bec60ae

We’ve all seen the magic of a school of fish, operating as if they share one mind, coordinating with an ease that few human systems can match. How do they do it?

Spoiler alert: there isn’t some amazing CEO fish in the middle shouting commands!

Instead, fish have in-built heuristics that guide behavior according to a few simple rules:
#1 — swim as close to other fish as you can
#2 — if you see food, swim toward it
#3 — if you see danger, swim away from it

And voila! They stay tight, turn on a dime, and (mostly) stay alive and well-fed. There are dozens of examples of emergent biological systems that show us something similar, from ants to mushshrooms to slime molds and more. Without any central cognition, systems like these act magically like one big brain.

Can humans be more like fish and slime molds? Humans are of course more complicated, but well-honed values and heuristics are still capable of hard-wiring the behaviors that, added up, equate to culture (read: how people behave when no one’s looking). Restaurateur Danny Meyer does this with simple catchphrases , and views his primary role as “Broadcaster in Chief”: constantly inventing, sharing, and obsessively repeating the simple principles that his employees can live by. Principles like: One size fits one… Mind your emotional wake… Always be collecting dots, always be connecting dots… Turn up the Home Dial… and more.

What simple rules are you and your teams living by? What rules could and should you live by?