I didn’t know much about jellyfish (apart from the fact that they are squishy!) till I come across one episode in the documentary series ‘Hostile Planet’ premiered on the National Geographic channel. Despite the controversy, I am fascinated with some amazing facts about the creature.
Jellyfish have inhabited the earth’s oceans for over 650 million years, and that is more ancient than dinosaurs. Whilst the dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago, jellyfish continue to expand their habitats and even threaten to dominate the ocean. They are some of Earth’s most ancient animals that are still alive today and there is a reason for it.
As a matter of fact, some useful lessons can be drawn from how jellyfish survived the harshest environment to help organisations to improve their business agility and thrive in today’s rapidly changing market.
CONTINUOUS GROWING
Jellyfish never stop growing and some species can become monsters with a diameter of 7ft 6in and tentacles of 120ft long. In the business management context, it is important for organisations to continuously facilitate staff learning and transform themselves. It is also known as the ‘growth mindset’ to develop people’s learning and capabilities for greater accomplishment. Just like jellyfish can clone itself and reproduce, organisations in their transformation process can always pilot with a self-development team and then roll out the success to the remainder of the organisation.
UNPARALLELED FLEXIBILITY
Despite the wide range of sizes, Jellyfish’s umbrella-like bodies allow them to pulse upwards and downwards without expending much energy. Organisations embrace an Agile way of working enable great flexibility in product development and reduce wasted effort by instant testing and modification. Being Agile does not only help organisations to improve product quality and speed to market through rapid iteration and experimentation, but it also enables the organisation to focus on value creation for clients, optimise process flow and reduce handovers across functions.
EFFECTIVE ‘NERVE NET’
Jellyfish have no brains, instead, they use nerve nets to sense changes in the environment and process sensory information such as light and movement in the water and coordinate response. For an organisation to be successful, the teams must be able to operate and cooperate effectively. Agile organisations establish and sustain a scalable network of empowered teams to organise efforts. These teams operate with high standards of responsibility, collaboration, transparency and alignment, and are able to react instantly to changes.
SIMPLE STRUCTURE
Jellyfish don’t have lungs, stomachs or intestines, their bodies are composed of only two cell layers – the external epidermis and the internal gastrodermis. The simple body design enables the jellyfish to absorb oxygen, consume food, expel waste, and exchange reproductive materials – just enough to get work done. Heavy organisation hierarchy can be counter-productive, whilst the right level of governance and control is required, a streamlined organisation structure and simplified system and workstream design can help teams to focus on what really matters.
ESTABLISHED RESILIENCE
Jellyfish is perfectly suited to today’s transforming oceans, resistant to increasing temperature, decreasing oxygen, changing salinity, rising acidity, and plastic pollution. When it is injured or cut in half, it can regenerate and grow new organisms. It is increasingly important for organisations to improve business agility and become more resilient in the volatile market. Agile methodology offers an invaluable solution to streamline organisational structure, optimise systems and workflow, integrate business and IT, enhance alignment in people, process and technology and boost flexibility and scalability of the business.
In summary, I have introduced some fascinating facts about jellyfish in this article. If organisations can exhibit these characteristics and continue to scale the Agile way of working, it will help them to become more effective and responsive to changes, enhance team collaboration, improve product quality and throughput, and outpace their competitors to deliver value to clients faster.
Leadership Tribe specialises in assisting organisations’ Agile transformation. Find out more about our Agile Transformation services here.
