Chapter 11 Darwin in the conference room

After lecturing a roomful of managers on the biological underpinnings of human behavior, I went to the cloakroom to get my coat.While I was waiting patiently for the lady who had disappeared into a pile of textiles with my number strip to return, two managers approached.One of them, whose accent should be from West Flanders, told another manager during a break between meetings that Darwin's theory of human beings can be so widely applied to companies, the economy, team leadership, etc. On the one hand, he was very impressed.He has long known that the "law of the strong" applies not only to the natural world, but also to the financial world.Weak companies and banks fail everywhere, while strong competitors survive and even thrive.Just as weak animals die soon, but strong animals survive and reproduce. "That's what Darwin said too," he added.And his colleague, speaking with a Limburg accent, thought he was wrong, childish, even dangerous. "Should weak people and corporations have to die? Let's forget about that evolutionary bullshit! Biologists should go about their own business and leave the financial world alone." "That," I said, "will Don't explain it to you while I'm waiting for my coat? Look..."

Evolution is a word that many people use without understanding its true meaning.It has nothing to do with sayings like the law of the strong, the perishing of the weak, or "survival of the strong."Evolution is small changes that occur in the gene pool of an organ as an adaptation to changes in the surrounding environment, not blindly.When the variation is great or numerous enough to clearly distinguish one group of animals or plants from another, different varieties, species, species arise...   Both managers frowned and looked at me sympathetically. "Okay," I went on, "what we have to remember is that it's not about the law of the strongest, it's that the most resilient species get more chances of surviving and the chances of those species reproducing increase accordingly .If people are all dead, how can they reproduce? So evolution is about adaptation, what matters is the gene, not the species. One organism is not stronger than the other, each species has its own laws of adaptation. Evolution Don't care about species, only about genes."

"Yes, yes." The managers, impatient not only because I got the coat but they didn't, asked, "What's the use of this for our company?" I sighed and said, " For example, the understanding of others. Human beings have adapted to the surrounding environment—not the environment we are in and living in now, but the environment of the savannah tens of thousands of years ago. In the distant past, generations of people slowly adapted to their surroundings, and these changes were written into their genes. It will be thousands of years, not much longer, we have greatly changed the living environment through cities and technology, and our genes have changed in such a short period of time. Little change has occurred in the same time period. So to understand human behavior, you have to go back in time.” “Yes,” said the man from West Flanders, finally getting his raincoat, “this you It was mentioned in the speech just now."

"Ah, you listened carefully!" I said with a smile. These biological roots are very important in a company.Managers usually choose to take a lot of technical courses related to topics such as leadership skills, thinking that after taking those courses, they can manage human resources with the help of routines developed by knowledgeable colleagues, and pinch people into various forms according to their wishes. kind of shape.However, this approach does not fit the behavioral elements that have long been present in human genes.You can try to control ancient behaviors, and sometimes it is necessary, but just think about the many forms of anger, and control often fails.In terms of leadership skills, managers often assume that they can make themselves a good leader by employing a certain formula, such as a well-timed smile, a pat on the shoulder for encouragement, and often seriousness about the points they make.But these are useless. Human beings do not rely on externally imposed, technical routines, but only rely on internal, biological formulas to recognize and approve a certain leader, and those biological formulas have passed tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years. development of.You see, leaders often radiate trust, are gregarious, and put themselves in other people's shoes.If you have these characteristics, you will naturally become a leader who is popular and accepted by everyone.These biological formulas will win you more hearts and minds than a technical routine.Your colleagues will be quickly awakened by them.

"That's not all." I added, "Most consumer behavior can also be explained by Darwinian theory, such as the relationship between buyers and sellers, the volatility of the stock market, and so on." People in Mang District exclaimed, "People buy and sell stocks by imitating each other, the so-called group consciousness!" "No," I said, "Human beings don't have any group consciousness at all. This is another misunderstanding." There is one, and will follow a lead horse almost blindly.Humans have a very developed sociability, among which cooperation is one of the most important elements of human evolution.It was important for our ancestors to have a close-knit group in which to learn from each other.If the majority of people do it, it proves to be right, so why should I go the other way, get myself into a position of being wrong, and even endanger the cohesion of the group?That's why we do what everyone else does, and that's not group consciousness at all!

"The theory of evolution is like this." The manager of the Limburg province concluded after getting the clothes. "No, no, these are just small examples. Do you want me to explain in a few minutes theories and ideas that would take me a school year to explain?" "No no no, of course not Yes," the manager replied, "but I'm a little bit interested in Darwinism now." Having said that, both managers felt that the theory of evolution could make a fundamental contribution to improving their leadership and management skills.I put on my hat and said fatherly, out of place: "But it would be good for you to understand what evolution really is, how humans evolve, and especially how humans present themselves at the moment. Let’s start with that.” I went outside, and it was drizzling, when one of the managers suddenly called out, “Can we come to your class?” “Anything please,” I said.