Lessons from slime mold: How to survive and thrive in ever‐changing organizational environments

Abstract

Kate Rutter is a senior practitioner at Adaptive Path. She blogs at www.adaptivepath.com or at her personal site www.intelleto.com. Her email address is kate adaptivepath.com. I magine you’re in a forest, surrounded by majestic towering trees. Underfoot is the soft, leafy, damp forest floor. Taking a seat on a fallen log, you arch the kinks out of your hunched shoulders, shake off the stress of the office and take a deep breath of fragrant, moist air. You ask yourself why work feels like you are part of a never-ending rat race...and you wonder...will it ever stop? How are you going to spearhead that major project or work with a new cross-functional team and deliver great results when the organizational environment hampers you? Much as I hate to interrupt your well-earned contemplation, I’m compelled to inform you that on the underside of the log you are sitting on is a life form teeming with insight about organizational behavior. Throughout the seemingly quiet forest, thousands of spores are performing an age-old dance, expressing quietly the tactics of surviving and thriving in this dynamic and ever-changing wooded environment. Say “hello” to slime mold. This lower fungus has evolved a clear set of survival techniques that are potent lessons for people grappling with challenges posed by shifting companies and markets. Who knew that insights into survival could be found literally under your feet? For years, biologists, botanists, media moguls, artists, authors and technologists have been captivated by the sophistication and tenacity of the slime mold lifecycle and the slime mold’s ability to morph from plant-like to animal-like behaviors in constant sync with the environment. I’m not a biologist. I’m a designer working in the field of digital products, information architecture and interaction design. But over the past eight years, I’ve been entranced with slime mold as a compelling metaphor for organizational development. In my work as an employee, manager, director and consultant, I’ve observed how organizations and teams shift in response to external forces, and I’ve found trends and patterns for acclimating and adapting to change. This article shares the examples that I’ve observed and explores possibilities and approaches for how businesses and people in them can better adapt to a rate of change that is rapidly becoming the standard for doing business. By using slime mold as a learning tool, we can identify practical tips and tools for surviving, thriving and doing great work in even the toughest of environments. This fascinating life form holds intriguing lessons for today’s knowledge worker... from sensing and responding to environments that become hostile to using the power of signals to create alignment and collective action.