What Companies Can Learn from Vampire Bats About Culture and Innovation
Does your company remind you of a scurry of squirrels or a colony of vampire bats? When it comes to innovation, creativity and progression, companies fall into one of two camps - the squirrels or the vampire bats.
In highly innovative companies, with engaged, driven employees, the prominent culture is that of vampire bats despite their macabre image. Sharing of ideas and open innovation is part of the DNA of these organisations.
Here’s why. Vampire bats are extremely rare in the animal kingdom in that they share their food with other members of the colony. Regurgitated blood is often shared with members of their roost that have not been able to find food. The bats are more likely to share a portion of their grisly meal with a fellow bat that has, in turn, shared with them in the past — you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. In this way the colony avoids starvation and ensures survival.
On the other hand your company may be overrun with squirrels. Squirrels gather their fruit, seeds and nuts when abundant and stash them away for the winter. Great for the sparse winter months but not if you’re an organisation that seeks to stay one step ahead of the competition. The pervasive culture of squirrels is that of hoarding, unwillingness to share, limited cross pollination of ideas and closed innovation.
Another reason why your company should seek out a bat culture is that bats are blessed with large ears and small mouths. Listening or feedback is a vital part of their ability to map their surroundings. Does your company’s leadership listen and reflect? Or are they armed with large mics each competing for airtime over the other — the battle of the execs on The Voice. Real listening, as opposed to pretend, is an art and a reflection of remarkable leaders. An organisation that masters listening will, like the bats, be able to fly in the dark — fewer emails, less meetings, less red tape, no need for hierarchies, more autonomy. So ask yourself, is your business echolocating of flying blindly? Learn and pursue the art of listening!
The overriding culture in firms grappling with innovation and progressive new ways of working is generally that of resistance. Here are five reasons for this stalemate:
a) An unrealistic expectation for employees to juggle their day job commitments and strategic transformational projects. If KPIs are driven by operational targets in the main, whilst transformational targets are left to a whim, guess what employees are inclined to focus their energy on?
b) Performance targets and incentives promoting old ways of working whilst not rewarding innovation even if it does not yield immediate visible results.
c) An absence of clear, demonstrable, actionable results and metrics for implementing new innovation and ways of working — not linking it directly to a real impact to the bottom line.
d) Initiatives lead centrally or by head office without taking along the business at the coal face along for the ride from the start.
e) A fear of change that new technology may represent e.g. job redundancies through Robotic Process Automation, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning etc.
In Crossing the Digital Desert, I discuss five principles for a successful innovation strategy. Principle 4 — ‘Be Charitable’ speaks about Open Innovation being contagious. “Keeping ideas in a locked safe reduces its evolutionary gene pool and will quickly lead to its irrelevance.” Vampire bats are the most charitable of animal species. Organisations that promote a vampire bat culture are more likely to succeed in navigating the ship in the dark and heading out to new and unchartered waters. Squirrels your days are numbered — the vampire bats can smell blood!
