I recently had the opportunity to meet author Rebecca Costa and hear her talk about her book “The Watchman’s Rattle: Thinking our way out of Extinction”.

Rebecca is an evolutionary biologist who asserts there is an uneven rate of change between evolution and progress. In other words, we can’t go any further or faster than evolution will allow, and we typically don’t realize it.  It’s why we have laws about texting and driving – there’s something in us that doesn’t acknowledge we simply aren’t built to be able to “multitask” safely in that way – we haven’t evolved that second set of eyes and extra appendage allowing us to do it safely.

Rebecca’s talk was fantastic. I wish I could include a full transcript here, but instead I’ll share some highlights that really stuck with me: 

• The Bonobo monkey is our closest biological relative – with only 1.7% difference between our DNA and theirs.  It’s amazing what we’ve been able to do with that 1.7% difference! 
• We live in a complex world that we are somehow able to make more complicated by the minute.  With progress comes complexity and more complex problems. Rebecca asserts that highly complex problems become overwhelming and lead to gridlock.  Once there is gridlock in problem solving, those societies that ultimately collapsed substituted facts with beliefs and created irrational public policy. 
• When there is complexity, there are many more wrong solutions than right ones and no one single solution is likely to solve a complex problem.

What’s her advice?

• Adopt high-failure rate models - Expect some level of failure 
• Accept that we have limitations – there are some things that we as human beings simply cannot do 
• Expect a high amount of waste in time, money and/or resources

My initial reaction to hearing this advice was - expect high amount of waste?!  Don’t like the sound of that.  But it makes total sense in context.  Look at her two examples: The Gulf oil spill and Chilean miners. 

In response to the Gulf oil spill, the team devised Plan A, put the plan in action, it didn’t work, and 30 days later we still had oil flowing. Then they tried Plan B, tested it, and it didn’t work either, and so on. Thankfully, Plan C worked and it didn’t go all the way to Plan Q!   Their approached was to put all of their eggs in one basket by trying one solution at a time.  

In contrast, when a group of miners in Chile became trapped in a collapsed mine - the rescue team developed 20 plans and launched them all simultaneously.  One was successful and all of the miners were rescued.  One could say that they ‘wasted’ time and money on the 19 that didn’t work, but the rescued miners and their families might disagree.

These examples highlight the need to bring in fresh thinking and new perspectives.  If we can only imagine one solution to a highly complex problem, we are limiting our chances of success. Solutions need to be multi-pronged and/or you need to be willing and able to devise multiple solutions (many non-related) and expect a high failure rate. 

I’m just diving in to Rebecca’s book now and am looking forward to having even more “ah ha” moments. For more of Rebecca’s insights, visit her webpage at: www.RebeccaCosta.com