Things that survive, survive

Sometimes a passage in a book keeps coming back to me. When this happens I reflect on how it might be connected to other ideas or events. Such is the case with the book This Explains Everything. In this book edited by John Brockman, many writers, thinkers, and scientists have provided essays, responding to the question “What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?” Susan Blackmore suggests that Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace offer such an explanation in the saying of “things that survive survive”. As we know, not everything survives and competition is fierce. In health care organizations are bought, they go out of business when the owner retires, and in many ways cease to exist. Other organizations survive, at least for a while. What is elegant about the saying “things that survive survive” is the idea that what allows an organization to survive today is not what it needs to survive tomorrow. The rules will change, by the survival of those that make it through to today.

It is so simple, yet very complex. We want to take a deep breath and relax a minute; we just won the race and made it across the finish line. But we can't relax, the race is still going only now with just the winners of the first event. A book that has a similar message, except for individuals, is What Got You Here Won't Get You There, by Goldsmith. As a professional you used certain skills and talents to achieve your current role, but you need other skills to tackle the next one. This seems exhausting and defeating. However it doesn't have to be that way. The answer is to keep learning.

Another essay in the book edited by Brockman is written by Brain Eno and talks about the elegance of the ideas that determinism isn't predictable and humans are not good at intuiting the outcome of predictable rules. If I bring these two essays together I see that survival in the next race requires us to avoid working with our “gut feelings” and instead collect and process data. Our past experience will likely lead us astray; we have to be thoughtful and analytical. A small change in the rules, due to the survival of some organizations, throws off the outcomes. The next set of winners won't rely on what was true in the past, instead they will be diligent and pay attention to today.