What we can learn from monkeys (part 1)
There are arguably many things we can learn from monkeys and in many senses. I'm not going to go anywhere near things like dietary content and biochemical realities; I'm more interested in what we can learn in terms of behaviour, individual and group and the degree to which they are interdependent, and what monkeys can teach us about real world maths. So welcome to part one: monkeys, policies and traditions...
A friend of mine from university dropped by yesterday and we got to talking about common practices vs best practices and how faced with too many choices and a degree of uncertainty (i.e. choosing from competing and rapidly developing technologies) people tend to stick as close as possible to the way it is now or seek justification for choices based on the what most other people have chosen up to now. This gave me the chance to air my new favourite saying:
"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it the superficial appearance of being right" Thomas Paine.
He countered by reminding me about the parallel between monkeys and many company policies and practices; programmed as opposed to reasoned behaviour. The parable of the cage full of monkeys and the bananas...
Take a large cage full of monkeys. Lower into the cage a large and attractive bunch of bananas. The instant any monkey touches a banana let loose thunder and lightening, fire hoses of ice cold water over all the monkeys in the cage, etc.. Pretty soon, the monkeys in the cage will stop trying to reach the bunch of bananas and content themselves with other sources of nutrition provided. Now substitute a new monkey into the cage. If this monkey tries to reach for the bunch of bananas the other monkeys, not wanting all the bangs, flashes and cold water, will stop them by force until the new monkey learns not to try and get the bananas. Then substitute another new monkey into the cage and the same thing will happen, with even the predecessor new monkey helping to prevent banana grabbing. Then another. And another.
Eventually you will have substituted all of the monkeys in the cage. None of them will try to get the bananas and any new monkeys will be violently prevented from getting the bananas. And none of them will know why...
Posted at 09:14AM Sep 22, 2008 by Chris Puttick in Management |