Are you up for a trophic cascade?

In 1995 they introduced wolves again into Yellowstone National Park in the US. There hadn’t been wolves there for 70 years.

The park’s ecosystem was out of kilter because deer had taken over the place. They wandered around eating everything, reducing the grasslands and hillsides to stubble.

The result was dramatic. The wolves started hunting the deer, so the deer vacated valleys and retreated to safer places.

Immediately, the valleys started to regenerate. New forests of aspen, willow and cottonwood sprang up. Birds returned, and so did beavers. Beavers built dams, which provided habitats for ducks, fish, otters and muskrats.

The wolves also hunted coyotes, which meant rabbit and mice populations grew, which attracted hawks and eagles. All the new vegetation meant more berries, too, so bears began to thrive. And on it went.

The phenomenon is called “trophic cascade”, meaning the complex chain of changes triggered by the addition of a top predator in an ecosystem.

But there was an even more dramatic result. The increased vegetation stabilised the soil along river banks, so that they stopped collapsing. Their channels narrowed and they became more fixed in their course.

Think about that: the wolves didn’t just change the ecosystem, they changed the physical geography of the park.

The story is in this video, which has been viewed more than 14 million times: https://youtu.be/ysa5OBhXz-Q

A high-functioning leadership team can have a similar impact on a company or a project. By “high-functioning” I mean imbued with clarity and purpose, disciplined and determined, and working together like a pack of wolves.

Such a team will begin effecting changes, and those changes will cascade. Ten good actions this month will generate a hundred good actions down through the operation in subsequent months, and so on, until, in time, the organisation is no longer what it was.

We help teams leading companies and delivering critical projects become high-functioning. Our popular one-day and half-day sessions introduce the principles that lead to organisational trophic cascades. Check out Discovery Day.