So much of what we want to understand about a thriving business can be found mirrored in nature.

Age-old principles we find at work in the natural order of things; especially when it comes to what sustains life or how the elements inter-operate, can provide powerful insight into how vital systems work best.

Many organisations have been forced to adapt to a distributed team structure due to COVID-19 restrictions, and this has created an unusual and uncertain landscape that is both unfamiliar and hard to navigate.

To help understand some important dynamics that this shift has caused, we will discover that the mouth of a large river, the point where it approaches the open sea, can provide us with a wonderful mirror in the natural world.

Rivers are amazing subjects that can teach us so much in terms of life-sustaining systems and in the following lesson, we'll see how key factors effecting two natural ecosystems can be seen to reflect issues that we may now be facing. 

In what follows, the river simply represents the way your team operates. 

Treating the sea as the destination, a pool of clients or the open market to whom you must deliver, I'm going to compare and contrast two very different scenarios; that of an ESTUARY and that of a DELTA.

It might be worth noting that deltas and estuaries only occur for large, mature rivers; small, young rivers will have little impact on the shape of the land or the waters of the sea.

Estuaries form where a large river approaches the sea and an expanse of water is created in which the fresh river water and the saline waters of the sea become mixed. There are many key attributes we can identify in this environment that can teach us about the power of a united team.

In summary, estuaries are much more energy-efficient; consisting of a single, deeper channel of faster flowing water that carries and delivers greater volumes of material, further out into the sea.

This is where the remote team situation finds it natural metaphor.

(LACK of) CONSTRAINT:
Deltas form where there are very few geographical (often geological) constraints present. Your team may recently have been freed from their geographical constraints in a similar way.

The water of the river is essentially free to find its own path. The result is that multiple channels spread out over a wide area and long, marshy islands take shape quite naturally; separating lines of water, which all significantly slow their pace. Cliques and enclaves often develop in remote teams, where individuals limit their personal and professional interactions to a few, preferred others, rather than inputting into the wider team.

(LACK of) FOCUS:
Deltas cover vast areas. They are, in this way, lacking in any clear point of focus. Energy is dissipated as the shallow waters feel the drag of the river bed. 

​ENERGY:
The velocity of the river water at a delta slows dramatically as separate channels emerge and each one becomes more and more shallow. The separate water channels make much less of an impact than would a single, united, focused channel of flow. 

A lot of energy is used up dealing with 'internal issues'. These internal issues distract from the job in hand - the primary purpose of carving the land and carrying sediment out to the sea. The water comes up against:

• marshy islands - separating the channels of water, increasing inefficiencies, preventing productive collaboration, decreasing 'communication'
• the build up of sediment - clogging the channels, providing further rooting opportunities for vegetation
• high levels of evaporation - reducing the medium of change. The large surface area of the shallow water channels lead to a significant amount of water volume being lost to the air.

With so little energy available, sediments carried by the river are often deposited long before it reaches the sea and vegetation is able to take a hold in these deposits - slowing the water flow even further.​

Notice also that there are very rarely any tributaries joining, and thus contributing to, the latter stages of a river that ends in a delta - so no new energy enters the system.

To summarise, deltas are very inefficient systems in terms of their management of energy; consisting of a multiple, dispersed channels of shallow, slower-flowing water that often delivers little of its load to the sea. 

Whilst they are 'perfect' in the natural world; a result of forces that seek to create an enduring balance, they also reveal the inevitable inefficiencies that result from unguided, unfocused energy and may reflect ways in which your team are struggling to manage the current mandate to operate remotely.

​We each handle crises in different, typical ways. With Coronavirus now posing a serious threat to numerous nations, this video explores not the details of the disease itself, but the phenomenon of our different responses to the crisis.

Your response may serve you well... but consider how others may approach the challenge with a completely different perspective.

This is not a medical video, it is not a public service announcement, it's going to be a video about the way in which we handle challenges
 
The first thing is to realize that the way that we respond to a crisis situation any challenge is related not so much to the nature of the crisis but to who we are as individuals.
 
So who we are affects our response a lot more than the actual situation itself because, as people have said many times in the past, the way we do anything is the way that we do everything.
 
In that light what I want to do is break down six character types six key typical responses that people bring to any kind of crisis and I wonder which one ones of these you identify the most with.
 
These archetypal characters are: the Sovereign (King/Queen/Boss), the Warrior, the Sage, the Mystic, the Lover and the Jester.
 
We are, of course, a mix of all these characters but if you look at your own reaction to challenges, ask yourself which of those characters is dominant for you.
 
You may already have an idea of which one dominates but you can get a lot more precise about your two driving characters by visiting the power profiling app. Find your typical response to a challenge with this free, instant Profiling Tool: https://teamme.app .
 
This simple online tool takes about 90 seconds and it is proving to be remarkably accurate in terms of helping you helping hundreds of people to understand their typical way of showing up.
 
If you want a detailed explanation of *how you think* then my Signature Consultations will reveal how your innate profile is both helping and hindering the way in which you are going about things - in life, in a relationship, your finances, your career - and how you can fine-tune that or adapt that in order to get a better result in life.
 
So, whether you're dealing with the coronavirus on a global scale whether you're dealing with a challenge in a relationship, in your finances, in a career situation - whatever it might be but really suggest you look into these things. I think you would find it really insightful - six universal characters that'll help you in many, many ways.




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