The Red Queen effect: why you have to keep moving just to stay in place

It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. With this fine sentence from Lewis Carroll's book Through the Looking-Glass, the Red Queen lays bare a fundamental truth: in a world that is constantly changing, standing still is not an option.

Adapting in order to survive

In evolutionary theory this phenomenon is known as the Red Queen effect. Organisms have to adapt continuously. Not in order to gain a lead, but in order to survive in an environment that is also constantly in motion. What applies to nature applies equally to organisations, teams and personal development. Customer wishes change, the market moves, technology accelerates. As an individual or a team you can work as hard as you like: if you do not adjust your behaviour, you inevitably fall behind.

Develop your super talents

Many people are inclined to keep relying on what they are good at. They deploy their natural talents daily and often successfully. But what if those talents are no longer enough in the context of tomorrow? What if your team, role or customer calls for a different type of behaviour?

MyHabits shows how drivers translate into behaviour

That is where MyHabits comes in. Where MyDrives gives insight into your deeper drivers, MyHabits shows how those drivers translate into behaviour. And above all: where your behaviour gets stuck, where your automatic responses have become unconscious and where you have to adjust your behaviour deliberately in order to remain effective.

Adapting behaviour to the situation

Flexible behaviour does not mean being able to do everything. It means knowing what your strength is and being able to adapt it purposefully to the situation. In my management book ’Haal het beste uit mensen en teams’ this is described as follows: flexible behaviour is not a trick, but the ability to deploy your natural preferences consciously and to step outside them when the situation calls for it.

Super talents

If you succeed in that, you do not develop standard skills but super talents: natural qualities that you get to know and handle so well that you can deploy them extremely effectively in constantly changing circumstances.

The Red Queen effect in teams

You see the Red Queen effect in teams as well. Teams that were successful in the past come to a standstill when they do not revise their behavioural patterns. Think of teams that keep developing structures and processes, but not collaboration. Of leaders who keep steering on KPIs while their people are longing for autonomy and trust. Or of specialists who keep excelling on content, but lose their connection with the organisation as a whole. What it comes down to: without behavioural renewal, sustainable growth is impossible.

Questions

Try asking yourself the following questions: how is it that I am working harder than ever, yet not getting a step further? What behaviour do I display by nature, and when does that behaviour not work? Where do I have to learn to switch? And what could that look like? You can ask those same questions in the we-form within a team.

The key lies in awareness and training

The good news is: you can train flexible behaviour. Not by reinventing yourself, but by becoming aware of your automatic behavioural preferences and learning from them purposefully.