The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog
For centuries, the Quest for the Holy Grail has parabled the elusive quest for success. With mystical power, the Grail adapts to each searchers unique (and often changing) goal. In the US — lacking medieval history, and with capitalism as a national religion — we favor epic entrepreneurial tales over allegorical myth. Most recently, unicorn hunts. Still, the Holy Grail, and quests for it, are easy business metaphors —with relevant teachings for both startups and incumbents. Its’ best-known telling, for a generation anyway, is the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
In case you’re wondering about business lessons from a Monty Python satire, know that John Cleese — when he hung up his comedy cleats — became a (highly paid) management consultant. He has a library of business training videos. Like the film — and unlike most business training — they’re informative and fun. In Cleese’s management training, the lessons are obvious. But anyone can play the easy chord — in this blog, we do the work. Better for retention.
To me, Monty Python is side-splitting. I know not everyone agrees. Monty Python is like truffles. Relished by some, abhorred by others — and a 3rd group doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about. With truffles, it’s a chemical thing — androstenone specifically, and whether someone has a negative hyper-sensitivity, positive affinity, or a complete inability to smell it. With Monty Python, I can’t say.
The genesis of the (non-satirical) grail story is Celtic mythology. If, like me, you ignored mythology since high school (what class was that anyway?), you might take a fresh look. Mythology’s ancient authors had minds like modern humans — capable of sophisticated thinking, albeit less our sophisticated technology. No smart phones, yet every bit as smart.
Mythology is the product of observing — and striving to make sense — of the world. Ancient folklore was fodder for monumental thinkers who — lacking electron microscopes and fMRIs and the Hadron Collider and the Hubble Telescope and Facebook — divined and codified explanations for the world around them: why winds blow violently, the sun rises daily, seasons recur endlessly — and where did we come from? Plus — importantly — why people should cooperate, pay taxes, repress primal urges, and refrain from lopping-off each others heads. Also, when and why people should lop-off heads (as directed).
Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles drew from millennia of oral tradition for their tales. For a couple millennia afterwards, writers incorporated and modified these early myths into new ones. Including the Grail myth.
In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Legendary Black Beast of Arrrghhh lives in the Cave of Caerbannog — Arrrghhh being the final utterance of anyone who encounters the creature. Guarding that cave is a mysterious and vicious creature — so terrifying that the mere description has Sir Robin soiling his armor.
Guided by a strange looking wizard named Tim, King Arthur and his knights arrive at the cave — to find the feared beast is a cuddly-looking rabbit.
Even without watching the movie (or excerpted clip), you can deduce that the seemingly harmless bunny is the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. After decapitating Roundtable knight Bors — who’d swaggered over to slay the “beast” — the carnage continues until King Arthur’s signature retreat call: “Run Away!”
As it turns out, a knight fleeing a rabbit was a common mediaeval visual metaphor for cowardice — and Monty Python’s inspiration for the Killer Bunny. The picture below is from a frieze on the Notre Dame cathedral.
While this carving is about morality — specifically, the vice of cowardice — this post isn’t. It’s about business in the midst of societal liminality when everyone knows the “old way” is dead, yet nobody quite knows the new one.
The last time we saw today’s level of technology-driven upheaval, Blockbuster ruled in-home movies, Kodak dominated photography, Borders was the most respected brand in books, and Blackberry owned the Fortune 500.
Those companies all had globally-recognized brands, superior operational expertise, defensive moats, scale, and world-class technical talent. Three of the four even had adoring customers.
The common disease of these once-iconic brands? Institutionalized narcissism. Borders was sure e-commerce couldn’t supplant their in-store experience. Kodak, that nothing could replace the quality of film and loyalty to their beloved brand. Blackberry, that email was everything, and corporations would never risk less secure platforms. Blockbuster, that they’d conquered in-home movie rentals (dismissing Netflix when they approached them about a sale) and whatever was to follow.
Creative destruction is part of business, and life — it’s not breaking news. Companies learn and adapt. These brands’ demise taught survivors to nurture awareness of emerging technologies, and to urgently develop digital transformation chops (which requires open-mindedness). The fate of these four companies was extraordinary because each was digitally aware — and somewhat adept — at a time most weren’t. They were each positioned to dominate, even to define, emerging, technology-driven replacement markets. Technical innovation didn’t kill them. Arrogance did.
Just as King Arthur’s knights died ignoring expert advice (it happened to come from a wise elder — the hubris could just as easily be an elder ignoring a young knight), after idolizing a superficial image, with ensuing folly. Plus impatiently jumping to a conclusion without considering consequences. All are vices portrayed alongside cowardice on Notre Dame’s facade.
Which brings us back to mythology — and to Rome. The ancient Romans were attuned to the perils of narcissism. The myth of Narcissus is the root of the word. It actually predates the Romans — originating in ancient Greece.
In ancient Roman society, evidence suggests there was a unique role: the Auriga, a trusted, high-status slave who chauffeured leaders and — in the staged pageantry of Roman Triumphs — stood behind a conquering Commander whispering Memento homo (“remember you are only a man”) to check his ego against over-inflation. The kind of over-inflation that makes a leader obsess over crowd size at the equivalent of his Roman Triumph.
In 2018, organizations don’t have Auriga’s. Maybe that explains the Google Trends chart below. “Compassion,” in red, is flat. “Sinus Infection,” in gold, climbs steadily around its seasonal fluctuation. “Narcissism,” in blue, has tripled — with all-time highs for a brief peak in March 2015, and again this year. If the trend continues, more people will soon search for help with narcissism than for stuffy noses.
Like their still-in-use aqueducts, ancient Rome’s humanistic understanding stands and remains relevant. Latin etymologies make Roman mythology seem particularly familiar, but the giants of psychology both considered mythology transcendent. Sigmund Freud said: “The theory of the instincts is so to say our mythology. Instincts are mythical entities magnificent in their indefiniteness”. His long-time collaborator Carl Jung wrote: “Mythological motifs are facts; they never change; only theories change.”
It is through mythology that Jung developed his archetypal framework for human behavior, since engrained in — amongst other things — the Myers-Briggs Personality Index and pretty much all major advertising. Archetypes are dynamic, ebbing and flowing through our minds and cultures. In Part 2 we’ll dive into the evolution of archetypes in 4IR, along with strategies to defend against becoming the next Borders Books — or getting decapitated by cute bunnies.
