The inch-long Bluestreak Wrasse enters the mouth of the 120 lb cod willingly. The small fish is not a meal for the human-sized cod, but rather the cod is providing life to the wrasse.
The Bluestreak Wrasse is a tiny fish that is a member of a fish family known as the “Cleaners.” These Cleaners feed on the dead skin and parasites that are on larger fish while the larger fish receives the benefits of being cleaned and having other immune benefits stimulated. In fact, the overall health, size, and even diversity of fishes are greater in the reefs where Cleaners are found versus those without their services. Sometimes the most profound examples of together-ness thrive in places we’d least expect.
Fish eat each other’s bacteria, and it helps them all live longer healthier lives. Larger birds often protect smaller birds from predators. Ants work together by the millions to build storehouses for the food that they procure and then share. Cooperation is a practice of all life forms it seems.
Humans engage in mutually-beneficial cooperative activities to reach goals as simple as moving a couch with a neighbor to as complicated as building bridges, playing symphonies, or eradicating diseases. But how is our cooperation different than that of our animal kingdom friends? Yuval Noah Harari, in his book Homo Deus, explains the difference this way, saying “Sapiens rule the world because only they can weave an intersubjective web of meaning: a web of laws, forces, entities, and places that exist purely in their common imagination. This web allows humans alone to organize crusades, socialist revolutions, and human rights movements.” While lesser evolved forms of life cooperate for survival (food, shelter, protection), humans cooperate for meaning.
Consider your organization’s mission statement. This mission was written to describe the unique impact that can be created when a group of people comes together. Organizational mission statements are rarely something that a single individual could do, but rather take into account the necessity of multiple, diverse individuals coming together to achieve it. So, how do these mission statements so easily become window dressing and screensaver fodder? Because it’s hard to work together. The meaning behind that mission statement only inspires your workforce, arbitrates hard tradeoffs, and shapes direction, when it is embodied in the ways it was intended.
The problem is that organizations, by their very nature, are places of fragmentation. And the larger and more complex they get, the more pieces they get cut into. Centrifugal force is natural. Centripetal force requires intention. Coming together in common endeavor demands risk. It requires the exchange of our egos, our “way,” our turf, for the hope that, together, something better will result.
So in a world where useless, cheesy team-building abounds, where research suggests that sometimes we are on collaboration overload, and where careers are built on making yourself stand apart from others, how do we learn to truly embrace togetherness as a vital, and unique, source of meaning?
Our families, neighborhoods, and most definitely our organizations are places where cooperation can be used to make meaning. But more often than not we see competition and not cooperation. Merging organizations fight to hang on to previous company culture. Rather than collaborating, high potentials compete. Co-founders debate over product details because they believe they alone hold the “right” vision. These experiences are not evidence of the selfish evolution of man, but rather proof that when multiple passionate people come together, there is both the immense potential for meaning and an equal risk for chaos and conflict. The centrifugal force of individuality in tension with the centripetal force of communities coming together. Must it be a contest?
This NQ14 is all about how to make meaning TOGETHER. We are going to be writing about how connecting individuals, teams, and organizations to realize the mysterious promise of what happens when we combine our efforts, resources, and dreams. Our hope is that we find what seems to be true of all of life – that the survival of the fittest is actually the survival of the most cooperative. And that our greatest sense of sustained meaning is found not just in our own efforts, but when we discover what those efforts can do when joined with those of others.