Starlings

If you asked 1,000 business owners what their responsibilities are, they might say things like make profit, treat people fairly, minimise environmental impact, and generally be as good, useful and helpful as possible.

And I’d say they’d be right – but I’d also add one thing:

We should all learn the art of murmuration…

Starling Murmurations

Murmuration is that mind-bending formation European Starlings make in the sky that looks like something from a 90’s screensaver.

While research is ongoing to understand how they do it, quite a bit is known already:

Aside from generally happening over their night sleeping site, there’s no flight plan and no leader – a single bird can see right to the edge of the flock in any direction, somehow keeping track of what the group is doing as a whole, and adjusting accordingly.

It comes down to this discovery: To make the right adjustments, one bird has to keep track of the movements of its 7 closest neighbours.

Each one of up to 750,000 starlings does the same, without colliding… while flying as fast as possible 🤯

What we can learn

Businesses learn from other businesses. We copy, follow, emulate, steal, and take inspiration – whether they’re competitors, or just doing something we admire.

Imagine flying in a murmuration of businesses, where you aim to positively influence 7 businesses around you… and they each influence 7 more.

Eg: You not only switch to an ethical bank, but you make a big deal about it, and call out the big bank you left behind for the dodgy, climate harming investments they make.

Then 7 others follow your lead.

And 7 follow theirs, and 7 follow theirs.

You don’t have to change the whole industry you work in… you just make friends with 7 of them, tell them what you’re changing, and why.

Maybe it’s not banking for you, maybe it’s:

• Going paperless
• Hiring locally
• Sourcing locally
• Low-carbon-ifying your website
• Ditching cheap promotional merch
• Digitising your documents

I don’t think people realise the burden they place on themselves when they say they want to “make the world a better place”.

It’s admirable, but the world is really big.

If you can make it better for just 7 others, you might kick-off quite a formation…

• • •

(Now here’s 2 minutes of Starlings doing their thing)