While creative talent and hard work play an obvious role, chance and randomness also influence problem solving and creative discovery. Countless inventions and discoveries are accidental. The difference between what happens to us, and what happens to those chance inventors, is that they notice things, stop, take a step back, and reflect on what they have just witnessed, ask why and how, and use their curiosity to wonder what else.

While we brush it off, grab our coffee and run to continue what we planned to do.

I read a recent post by Seth Godin on the invisibility paradox. We believe more in what we see, even if it’s a placebo effect, than what we don’t. We’re unsure what to do with things that are invisible.

At work, this translates into focusing more on what we can easily measure than what we cannot. Measuring our effectiveness with hours spent at work, following KPIs to their rabbit holes, calculating profit at the expense of human well-being, are all examples we experience daily. What’s harder to see, or measure, is the culture we work in, the level of trust we have with our colleagues and managers, time spent thinking of, and developing, new ideas, and even how the space we’re working in is helping us, or not, in being more creative or effective at work. When we don’t put the culture on our radar, we tend to forget it exists.  

In the 19^th century, people began the process of eradicating wolves from the Yellowstone park in the US. The main reason was ranchers worried about their grazing livestock. As soon as the last pack was wiped out in 1930, changes came quickly.

The elk populations began to increase steadily, and large areas of the park were stripped bare, especially the riverbanks. The grass as well as the saplings disappeared as elks munched away the resources, Beavers found themselves without their main supply of trees, Willows and Poplars, that grows near rivers. Even birds didn’t find enough food and immigrated away along with many other species.

Things were not looking good for grizzlies either. The sugar and carb-filled berries they eat before winter were being plundered. Riverbanks became wastelands, and because there was no longer any vegetation to protect the ground, seasonal flooding washed away the soil. Erosion advanced rapidly.

As a result, the rivers began to zigzag and follow increasingly winding routes through the landscape. The less protection there is for the underlying layers of soil, the stronger the serpentine effect, especially on flat ground. This continued for decades. Until 1995.

A decision was made and wolves caught in Canada were released back to restore the Yellowstone’s ecological balance. This single action created what could be described as trophic cascade.

With the wolf back at the top of the food chain, they did what wolves do when hungry. They found something to eat. A lot of easy-to-catch elk.

The wolves ate the elk, and the elk avoided open areas along the riverbank. This gave the willow and poplar sapling a chance to grow, and they grew faster than most. Once the riverbank became stable, it slowed the flow of the river, and it carried less soil. This invited the beavers to come back, and those industrious creatures built dams that slowed the flow of water even more, creating ponds that becme homes for amphibians, along with a diversity of bird species who came to check into this new oasis. Here’s an inspiring video that shows how wolves indeed affected the behavior of rivers.

Wolf-Woman,

Randah Taher