Teamership: Serengeti Rules
Every action connects to the system and contributes to its function. Photo by Kiriakos Verros on Unsplash
For a recent family movie night, I bucked the trend of watching comedies, animated films, or family friendly dramas to watch …a documentary.
The film was called The Serengeti Rules and is based on the book by Sean B. Carroll of the same title.
Apologies for the minor spoilers here – I still enjoyed a second watching, so I don’t think I’m taking away from your experience too much if you decide to watch it. The Serengeti Rules tells the story of a group of researchers who independently explored a range of ecosystems, ranging from tidal pools to kelp forests, rainforests and, of course, the Serengeti.
What ties the researchers together are the same connecting principles that allow each of those systems to thrive or diminish. They referred to a thriving ecosystem as one that is upgrading, and a diminishing ecosystem as one that is downgrading. Initially, the lead researcher believed that the key to ecosystems that can reverse the process of downgrading and lead to upgrading was dependent upon predators.
He believed the predators helped to keep other populations in balance.
This view became more nuanced and led to a view about trophic cascades which, according to the film’s website, is:
“a phenomenon where species impact other species even if there are no direct interactions among them.”
In an organisational setting, we are all continually setting off trophic cascades.
The way that we work with our team affects the way in which members participate on other projects, which impacts how our clients experience our organisation, which influences our Chief Financial Officer’s job in forecasting cashflow, which affects how many people the company can hire ... and so on.
This is how complex adaptive systems work.
Every action is connected either directly, loosely or indirectly with other parts of the system and contributes to the system’s functioning. The Serengeti Rules researchers’ breakthrough was taking the logic of trophic cascades one step further.
It was identifying the species that had the most significant impact through trophic cascades. The term that they used was keystone species, which is one that has an “outsized influence on an ecosystem and if it were removed the ecosystem would change drastically.”
The researchers in the film found that these keystone species varied from setting to setting.
For example, sea otters, starfish, and wildebeest were each keystones in their environments. Subsequent research has identified that they can be spiders or even plants, as long as that species has a disproportionate impact on the systems in which it operates. In the context leading teams, rather than being species, the keystones are people, activities and behaviours.
As a leader looking to support team performance, you can’t dedicate your energy, attention and time to all of the possible activities and behaviours. The best approach is to identify the keystones that will have a disproportionate impact on your team and invest in those.
Here are a few things to consider this week:
What are the actions and behaviours that will have a disproportionate impact on your team’s performance?
How might you spend more energy, attention and time on those?