Evolution Is Nature’s Rule — Why Stagnation Kills Potential - WSLT#8
In many businesses, there are multiple departments that contribute to the growth of a company. By book, the Research & Development (R&D) department of a company mostly may book losses while the Sales department may be the profitable.
Have you ever wondered then why people keep R&D? The answer to this will open a big personal development aspect many people try to preach.
The Corporate Blueprint: Why Sales Needs R&D
Let's take a car manufacturer as company A, since it is one of the competitive sector. A starts manufacturing a car model and it goes viral. Then it starts mass producing the same model and earns more money.
Company B launches a new model which rivals A's model. A's market share comes down. Another company C also starts competing and A's market share comes down further.
Here comes the role of R&D. When company A introduced its viral car, the R&D of A, would have started researching the next car. Through various failures and feedback, it should have found the next car that is supposed to go viral when C introduces its car as a competitor.
Since A has a new car model now, it will introduce the new model and will get back its market share. When it happens, R&D would have started its journey towards the next car iterations.
I tried to explain it as simple as possible but the core idea is, to get a massive hit once, we only need a sales team. But to get long term success we need a proper R&D team.
It doesn't mean that sales team is not important. Without proper success in sales, what's the use of R&D producing multiple line ups but none sold?
Why are we discussing some corporate functions now? Because it teaches the same principle what nature teaches us.
The Law of Life: Adapt and Survive
One of the nature's principle is, adapt and survive. To adapt and survive, life evolves. That evolution doesn't happen just like that; it happens through multiple trials, variations and adaptations.
From the earliest single cell organism, life emerged the vast variety of living organisms we see today, including us. The multiple trials and adaptations gave wings to birds, horns and poisons to animals, and thinking power to humans.
Those evolutions are part of nature and needed for survival of nature and all living beings. From this evolution, nature teaches us one important lesson that, evolving is not an option, it's a mandatory requirement for survival.
Corporates adapted this principle in the form of R&D, to thrive, evolve and get better of the market. But why individuals think it as an option?
I believe, we are not just meant to be born and die. I believe the life's purpose is to be lived it to one's fullest potential. By doing this, we are not just living our lives but setting new standards to the upcoming generation.
Think it as a never-ending relay race, in which you have to achieve your full potential and then pass the baton to the next generation. But most people think average, perform average, and set a wrong benchmark for the next generation.
By not achieving what you can, you are not only betraying yourself but also wronging the future generations. When I say achieving, I am not only talking about wealth and money, but the skill development, overall improvement.
The Shifting Ceiling: Lessons from 100 Years of Olympic Sprinters
As an example, take the Olympic 100m race, in the early 1900s the time taken by the winner was around 11 seconds, but in 2024 Olympics, it reduced to 9.79 seconds, with the current Olympics record as 9.63s by Usain Bolt 2012 London Olympics.
If you think these are individual records, then let's calculate the average time of the Olympic finals, from around 11s in 1900s, it reduced to 9.84 in last Olympics.
You can see the gradual decrease in the time taken by individual and the group. It is because we always try to achieve new targets as a society. If you further analyze the same Olympic records you will find more interesting discoveries which nature tries to teach us.
To explain it I have taken the records from 1900. In early 1900s, the winning time was 11s. For several Olympics, the winning times remained around 10.6–10.8 seconds. Then, in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, Eddie Tolan set a new Olympic record of 10.3s. After that, it took 5 Olympic Games to break that record.
After that, the times again improved gradually until, in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, Jim Hines set a new Olympic record of 9.95s. It then took 5 Olympic Games to break that record, when Carl Lewis ran 9.92s in 1988.
Then came another exceptional jump. In 2008 and 2012, Usain Bolt set Olympic records in two consecutive Olympics with 9.69s and 9.63s respectively, with the 9.63s record still standing.
But from the previous patterns, it will be broken by someone. It may happen after a few Olympics. Now if you see the pattern, the athletes evolved and their speed increased. But important key to notice is, some exceptional people always appear, set new high standards and after sometime they become normal standards, then new exceptions come and set a new standard.
So the pattern tells us, that by evolving, people achieve. Even for a non-exceptional person, achieving the benchmark is always possible. All people cannot set new records but all can try to achieve the new records and in that process, we always break our own records.
if we hadn't evolved, we would have stuck in the same 11s even after 1000 years. This is one example and the same rule can be applied in all aspects of our life. Increasing life standard, achieving new discovery, advancing medical treatments - if you take any skill in the world, the world is what it is today because of the human advancement. It is the evolution and adapting to the new situations shaped the humanity throughout the history.
Even our body is programmed to adapt to the situations. If you get a fever due to a new virus, your body may struggle at first, because it won't know how to handle. But once it's cured, this data is retained in our immune system. If the same virus attacks again in future, the immune system knows how to handle. This once again proves how our life naturally updates us to attain the highest state possible.
I was trying to explain why adapting to new challenges and evolving to survive is important. Its not only for the society, but it is much needed for the individuals. I think it is the biggest lesson one can take from nature and nurture himself to attain new heights. because it is what we are programmed to do,even at cell level. Forgetting and neglecting what we excel to do is actually a crime we commit against the humanity in my perspective.
How to Build Your Personal Feedback Loop
As a society, some people creates a benchmark and others attain it. In corporate world, the evolution itself is documented as a process and strictly followed. But individuals struggle to identify the "to be followed" process for them because most of us talk about improvement but not about how to improve.
Let me explain in short, how can you set the process for your own goals. We already covered in how to set goals and targets, so we are not gonna discuss about it in this post. But make sure your targets are adaptable to the feedback loops.
Because feedback and retrospection are important for finding what's working and what's not working. Our success and progress lies in finding what's working for us and how to remove what's not working.
By doing this continuously you can find a more defined process what is exactly working for you.
In finding what's not working, the failure analysis is more important. Sometimes, retrospect means not just looking what's exactly worked. It means finding what didn't work in a different perspective. If you see it just from your view, you will always come to a conclusion that you did everything perfectly but still it failed. In psychological terms, this is called survivorship bias.
Fixing Your Retrospectives: Survivorship Bias and Abraham Wald
May be a true incident from WWII may give a different perspective in how to view failure differently.
Abraham Wald, a member of the SRG(Statistical Research Group) at Columbia University had to do research on the airplanes that got hit, to increase their survival. They observed the returning bomber planes from war, and most of them got hit in wings, tails and body.
So the general decision was to strengthen the places they got hit to make it stronger. But Wald pointed out one missing data, that they were only analysing the data from returned planes and not the one's shot down.
He gave a different perspective that the planes returned were hit in body, wing and tails. It indicated the parts survived the hits. But the planes that hadn't returned might have got hit in engine or cockpit. He theorized that those were the parts vulnerable and that should have to be strengthen.
This is a classic example of survivorship bias, which means if we take the data which only worked without checking the full picture we tend to leave the critical data which may lead to potential issues. So while retrospect, we have to check carefully and then tweak the targets. This will make sure that we don't miss crucial points.
Now I hope I explained why and how we can evolve to make up to our full potential. This is part of this week's WSLT. If you find this useful, please subscribe to my future articles and take a look at my previous WSLT articles.
Key Takeaways
- Adaptation is not an option; it is a law of survival.
- Yesterday’s exceptional record is tomorrow’s baseline standard.
- Analyze what failed, not just what survived.
- Build feedback loops that continuously keep what works.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Wald
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men%27s_100_metres_world_record_progression