Survival of the Flexiest

Charles Darwin never actually said ‘it’s not the strongest nor the most intelligent who will survive, but those who can best manage change’. It remains however, a useful summary of his theory of Natural Selection.

Looking more closely at the three parts of that statement:

Strength is commonly used as a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) for the likes of beer, painkillers, coffee and toilet paper (and sometimes consumed in that order). Intelligence is similarly used to sell smart phones, cars, vacuum cleaners, and TVs. And just look at most top schools around the world, who build their brands on intelligence, through exam results, and strength, through sporting prowess. It’s obvious to think of these two traits as key determinants of success – whether for fast moving consumer goods, or an entire species.

But how many organisations promote change as their USP? There’s a simple answer why most don’t, of course: nobody ‘buys’ change. Change can’t clean our carpets, heal our headaches, or get us an ‘A’ in Algebra. But our ability to master change determines how our products (or protégées) are created and evolved bigger, better, and faster than the rest. Mastering change is also a USP for differentiating our most important product – ourselves!

Marketing 101 says we should adore our customers, not our products. But our customers are increasingly fickle, and to maintain their affections we must keep giving them more – and not just more of the same. To paraphrase (and ahem, somewhat sanitise) Billy Connolly, ‘they want it now, they want it yesterday, they want more tomorrow, and the demands will all be changed then, so stay awake!’ As an observation that our ability to change outguns every other survival skill in life, Darwin himself could not have put it better.