Finance, Start-ups, Scale-ups, People, Ecosystems, and the BRAIN

That’s Frankie. My Dog. Just sayin’.

I was listening to a podcast from the author of Thousand Brains – New Theory of Intelligence and it got me thinkin’. For anyone that has ever worked for a company… in particular a financial institution… there is awareness training. There is Security Training. There is Compliance Training. There are courses galore. One after the one. It is required. It’s part of due diligence. And we get it done. But it is a click-FEST, we all know it, and all you want is for IT… to end. Right?

What we DO NOT have is extensive training of WHAT is REALLY important. HOW you DETERMINE what is important. How you prioritise, at SCALE. Seems obvious right? When the floodgates OPEN. As it does at many start-ups and scale-ups. How you question, over and over again, viciously, to refine your ideas. Filter. Prioritise. Remove the ego. Across the board. Challenge BAD ideas. Until there are no imperfections left. Well, some companies drill this behaviour into the employees actually. Quite successful companies it turns out. You know who you are 🙂

So, when you have many autonomous units having to reach a consensus on what is important for the overall ecosystem within which you reside, then how do you optimise for each component, and make them operate at a 100% capacity individually. Many individuals. Many sub-groups! And different incentives for different entities.

But this is also an “ENGINEERING” perspective. What is 100% capacity? Utilised how? To what END?

Whether it is within one body, one loving family, a dozen people, a company, a country, a continent, or a planet, the efficiency of the ecosystem is directly linked to the HEALTH and SUCCESS of that ENTIRE ECOSYSTEM as a whole. So a shared purpose. Right? Always weighting differently for different entities within that eco-system.

With that in mind, what is the optimal design for such an ecosystem? How can we balance each component, to reach optimal overall efficiency? In a HUMAN ecosystem, where everyone seemingly seems to pull in different directions right? How does the psychology of each of these individual components affect the overall ecosystem? Permutations galore right? Like in a human brain. So many neurons firing simultaneously, to provide the best data set we can available for analysis. All provided, to a central authority… or simply a DIVIDED democracy, which ultimately determines an outcome. The brain.

P.S. This is not a political statement 🙂