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Business Lessons From Dolphins

By Sherry Lowry, The Lowry Notes™

Adapted from: Strategy of the Dolphin: Scoring A Win In A Chaotic World (c) 1988 Dudley. Lynch and Paul Kordis -- who bring transferable insights to the forefront in this book as they clarify why strategies used for the past 40,000 years in life and in business have recently been replaced by the more elegant approaches we can learn from dolphins.

Perennially acknowledged for their brilliance and intuitiveness, here are tips from the dolphin-world we can use as alternatives to "shark-like thinking" (striving to dominate or fight it out) or "the carp-way" (going along to get along, eaten alive or ignored).

Going For The Elegant Outcome

Elegant: precise, neat, simple.

The persistent search for what WORKS. For what makes sense. What will deliver the outcome so all related will survive a.n.d. thrive. Sometimes this is surrender. It involves telling the truth constructively and avoiding useless, unproductive drama. It makes a commitment to the "big picture" and the long view without losing sight of the essential details. When challenged, instant retaliation may be called for but always equally quick forgiveness.

Leveraging The Wave -- Special Secrets

Learn the special symbols of your particular brand of success. In every industry there will be one or two essential things to know -- and to know first and most thoroughly. Then, leverage lies in the expansion of that knowledge and information -- how much you have of it, the quality of it, how rapidly you can process and package it, how relevantly you can share or market it?

Timing is everything -- and there is always a "best of times."

Know there is a life of a project, life of a single individual, life of a business, life of a product, life of the society into which it fits. Launch manageably small, new flurries of your strategic activities immediately, then capitalize on the learnings from them as you attack the logic of the "what's next." This allows you to see your business and your organizing into the future, while also being in present reality, and in control of the management of your implementation. There is no future in knowing all you need to know before you begin.

"Lead from a place in time that assumes you are already there and that is determined even though it hasn't happened yet" is the advice of Stanley M. Davis in Future Perfect. This let's you pull your strategy into the future versus being pulled BY your strategy. The dolphin uses the force of the wave for this purpose versus his body.

Up Periscope -- Breaking Set

Take the time to challenge your ideas, habits and assumptions. You need to break set, take a fresh perspective, question the status quo, ask a new and different kind of question, see the world with fresh eyes. "How would I really like it?" is a great place to begin. So is: "How do we really need this to be?"

My favorite current breaking set questions: "Is this still useful?"

The dolphin takes complete responsibility for how it responds to everything. In most situations we also have a wide variety of choice in how we respond -- the key is to be responsible about our choice-making powers. Sharks favor force; carps favor effort. Dolphins favor elegance, finesse, grace. They know what counts is what works. At times, they also get out of their pool and into the unexplored ocean.

Being "On Purpose" -- Avoiding The Fate That Aches

Dolphins have to have synchrony or congruence between what they are doing, thinking, and feeling. This has to match why they are here and who they are. They do not accept for long the status of "fish out of water" as they are quick to challenge and question any drift or disengagement.

It's this alignment that leads to being "on purpose," anchored, stable, able to go with surprises and see them as part of the flow. While "on purpose" life and business has meaning. When we're "off purpose," confusion about meanings and motives reigns.

Vision Building -- Through Time's Window

Constant course correction rules....but the key to the successes this fosters is a reasonably clear understanding of what you want in the first place. Herein lies the difficulty. Ask the carp or the shark to "idealize," or imagine or blue-sky it....and what you get is either their safest view (carp cop-out) or an inside look into their private agenda (shark's favorite). In any case -- it's probably also going to include or preclude what they DON'T want versus what's best for all. Focusing on what you don't want or you already know generates: a) creating exactly what you already know -- which is same old box or driving by your rear-view mirror; or b) creates avoidance but not forwarding. Neither is grounding though, they may be riveting -- though not to our future.

Brain-science research has linked visioning processes to the capability to take on complexities in thinking. So juxtapositioning what's known with what's being experienced with what can be anticipated -- then asking the crucial "what if" questions is the path to the forward-looking part of the brain. (Ironically enough, located front and center of our heads!)

Carps operate within known and safe "time and space horizons." Limited learnings here about the unknown's for them, consequently. Sharks are without peripheral vision -- so they are dead-on accurate with the linear thinking but are without the elements of the alternative possibilities and the finer details. They also don't see very far ahead....and depend upon movement and smell versus intuition, a triple handicap. Sharks also move so fast they have little flexibility for short-notice change. Not so the dolphin.

To conclude for now, here are some gifts of dolphins we may want to acquire to win in our own business world -- which definitely has to be occasionally chaotic if it's also thriving:

• learn to thrive on challenge
  
• remain ever-vigilant, reading the currents, searching for clues, monitoring changes
  
• swim adaptively in many types of currents, any pool
  
• take action well collaboratively and in a coordinated way -- or competently alone. Don't struggle for fit
  
• if things are not working, ruthlessly pursue what does work versus being too deadly patient
  
• cut losses quickly, without regret, and don't look back...the future is ahead and the present is beside.

Sherry Lowry is an author and a professional mentor/business coach of professionals, entrepreneurs, and other business owners. She provides free group teleconferences on using public speaking as a marketing tool, breaking into the corporate market, and other topics described at WWW: ttp://www.sherrylowry.com The Lowry Notes can also be found here. Media Collision sponsors her new co-authored article series: The SeamLess Life™/ When More Is Simply NOT Enough is on WWW / Sideroad: http://www.sideroad.com/seamless/

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Last updated on July 1, 1998 || E-mail Ron Logsdon, AACS executive director