Bats, frogs and Wayne Gretzky Hrush Mar 12, 2009

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In the last few months, the business world has steadily come to a boil thanks to the global financial crisis and a steady spate of bad news. All things considered, we are in the middle of the worst economic crisis anyone under the age of fifty has ever witnessed.

Times like this pose a remarkable challenge for businesses, because a crisis tends to accelerate the pace of change–technology is changing at ever-faster speeds; business models are rising, falling and evolving; and economic conditions are only slightly worse than disastrous.

Keeping up with change is difficult even during the calmest periods, but in a crisis of this proportion, the ability to anticipate change becomes the single most important skill a business has. Predicting the future is impossible, but it’s not the same as anticipating change.

Companies that have the talent to anticipate change do it successfully by being very good at two things: 1) reading and understanding weak signals and 2) having the gumption to act upon weak signals without kicking up too much of a fuss around having concrete evidence or building elaborate business plans on a foundation of guesswork. Waiting for evidence usually has one result–change will pass you by.

Bats and frogs are a great analogy. Frogs survive by eating flies and other insects. Question: what would happen to a frog if it was put in a room full of dead flies? Answer: it would die of hunger. A frog’s vision is based on patterns created by the combination of contrast, shape, motion and light. And a frog cannot see something unless all four signals are present and combined. Dead flies don’t move; no motion, no vision, no reaction, no food. Dead frog.

Bats, on the contrary, are capable of perceiving and processing a wide range of very weak signals. A bat’s inbuilt ‘sonar’ system sends out pulses, which return ‘echoes’ and create a fuzzy picture of their environment. When a bat’s sonar system receives an echo that indicates prey, the bat switches from a low frequency pulse rate (10/second) to a high frequency pulse rate (200/second) to quickly gather more information such as direction and speed of movement, shape and size. Bats can’t see as well as frogs, but they’re a darned sight more skilled at survival for just that reason–they make decisions based on fuzzy pictures and limited information.

American hockey superstar, Wayne Gretzky has been called the greatest hockey player of all time. Gretzky credits his success to his talent for anticipation–”I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it’s been.”

Bats, frogs and Wayne Gretzky have something to teach all of us.