Murmuration and Contagion

An interesting perspective on contagious behaviour from Don Tapscott's group



This video got me thinking about contagion in 4 dimensions and which expressions have the most power to influence and create engagement and change. Is it physical movement, emotions, knowledge and ideas or faith and beliefs?

Obviously it would depend on the details of who, why, when and where of the situation. We might believe that an idea, belief or piece of information expressed in 4 dimensions will be more likely to create an impact over a more limited expression.

However the starlings in the video are a good example of the contagious power of energy, movement and body language alone to communicate objectives and goals.

Clearly there is no intellectual exchange of ideas through words (written or spoken) between the birds, nor are there any displays of obvious emotions like joy, anger, frustration or happiness that we would recognise. And we might also suspect that faith or spiritual belief, as we understand it, is unnecessary for these animals as it could be argued they have an instinctual knowledge of their place and purpose in the Kosmos. From their perspective only one dimension of expression - the physical - is required to communicate a performance objective in team 'Starling'.

This reminded me of my personal mantra of always working to people's strengths.Particularly in the field of creativity and innovation.

Innovation, in any context, can best be achieved by integrating and orchestrating a diverse group of individuals in one process of idea sharing to get an integral solution through multiple perspectives. Allowing everyone at every stage of their personal journey to contribute ideas often leads to a more satisfying and innovative solution.

However this process requires expert facilitation as the question becomes, how many of the 4 dimensions of expression are required and when for a diverse group to meet, communicate and share ideas?

Tom