Lessons from the Life of Plants

Words: 830. Reading time 2 minutes 46 seconds

At this time of year most of the plants in my garden are working hard to produce the seeds of future flowers. Nature has them all focused on just one thing – reproduction: leaving enough of themselves to ensure that future generations survive.

And to us thinking, sentient human beings nature appears to be profligate.

The humble dandelion produces between 54 and 172 seeds per head and a single dandelion can produce more than 2000 seeds. Some estimates suggest that annually dandelions produce more than 240 million seeds per acre.

A typical sunflower will have between 260 and 800 seeds per flower head, depending on the growing conditions and a typical geranium will have about 5 seeds per flower and between 40 and 100 flowers per plant.

So, how come we are not knee-deep in dandelions, sunflowers and geraniums? Because seeds are like our ideas, efforts, experiments, trials and initiatives – some are successful; many are not.

If you are not seeing failure, you are not trying hard enough
Obviously a certain proportion of the seeds will not survive the journey from parent plant to place of germination. Many will be broken, burnt, waterlogged, eaten, aged or decayed along the way.

Some seeds may not even be viable (have life in them) to begin with. This is why many plants invest a lot of energy into seed production - to produce many, so multiplying the chances for the few.

And we would do well to recognize that success to failure ratio in Mother Nature and be aware that we could do a lot worse than imitate some of her ways.

Just because we plan, develop a strategy, set SMART goals and visualize our outcomes does not mean that we will always succeed all of the time. As Dwight Eisenhower pointed out: “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

Nature's manual for maximizing outcomes

Nature adopts a variety of strategies to improve the chances of successful germination. How many of these could we adapt to foster our own dreams and desires?

1. Plants have evolved -in most cases- methods of dispersing their seeds. This means transporting them to a place away from their parent, ensuring that some of them will find suitable conditions for growth elsewhere, where there is less chance of competing with their siblings for space (finding new markets).

2. Some seeds and seed-like fruits are carried by ocean currents. Such seeds are of the kind that can float for a long period without absorbing sea water and establish themselves finally in tidal mud or on beaches (waiting for favourable economic conditions to materialize).

3. Animals and birds disperse seeds, too. We often see them in late summer and early autumn with numerous seed-like fruits adhering to their hides or feathers (using a surrogate sales force and word-of-mouth marketing).

4. A variable proportion of seeds of many kinds of plants resist prompt germination. One example is the uneven ripening and shedding of the fruits of some grasses, such as the giant foxtail (test new ideas in series, rather than in parallel).

5. Many legumes, such as the clovers, produce a variable proportion of seeds with impermeable seed coats, which may resist germination for long periods (give ideas time to mature and develop, rather than getting carried away, releasing them before they are fully worked out).

6. Some species produce pods in which one segment remains indehiscent—closed—and the seed within it remains dormant for a long time, as in cocklebur (Xanthium), for example (where an idea has scope for variations and enhancements, start with the basic model instead of diluting the market and, possibly, increasing start-up costs).

Gardeners and nurserymen also give nature a hand by selecting for certain characteristics and using only seeds from plants that are seen to be disease and virus free. They also save only from straight varieties, in other words not from any hybrid varieties that have been crossed with other material.

The initiates we elect to trial should be similarly selected.

The story of Brython the Bean

The great thing about cultivating your own seed (ideas) is that you can actually improve your selection with a little bit of thought to what you are doing. The late Brython Stenner from Glamorgan, South Wales, even though only a keen amateur, quickly became a legend in his own life time. His thinking was that you should select only the strongest, healthiest plants, those that consistently produced the longest and most filled pods along the row. Does that sound obvious? It does now.

Because of one amateur’s dedication, the 'Stenner Strain’ bean is the only bean that is consistently winning on the show benches today. They not only look good, they taste good as well.

So, even with careful preparation and nurturing, be prepared for less than 100% germination with all your schemes.

Do not be hugely surprised if some things take longer to come to fruition than others.

And, as Robert Louis Stevenson remarked, “Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”

Being SMART - S is for...

Words: 1,000 Reading time: 3 minutes 20 seconds

The SMART acronym is past its sell-by date and highly ineffective, but still heavily in use by unthinking project managers, unimaginative trainers and uninspiring coaches.

Acronyms and abbreviations are supposed to add colour and texture to the written and spoken word and to life in general. Their purpose is to assist in memory retention and learning.

They lose all of that whenever they become trite, confusing or uncertain. SMART has managed all three.

Those that are still trotting out this tired old carthorse claim that the goal, task or project must meet these criteria to be effective. But just what are the criteria?

There is zero agreement on what SMART is supposed to stand for. That’s why it’s such a useless tool. Just take the ‘S’ of SMART. A very quick search on the internet yields us the following alternatives for use in formulating our objectives:

Self-controlled; self-managed; self-owned; sensible; significant; simple; specific; strategic; stretching; straightforward; succinct; synergistic; systematic

This list is by no means exhaustive, but how helpful are even these few candidates as possible progenitors of ‘S’?

Self-controlled and self-managed are very close in meaning. Neither adds very much to the process of formulating the goal. If the path to the objective is not in our control, then it’s likely to be someone else’s objective rather than ours. It’s the same with self-owned. As possible roots for our ‘S’ they are little better than tautological.

Sensible? Some of the most awesome and inspiring goals were and are anything but sensible: climbing Everest; deep-sea exploration; curing AIDS; world peace.

Significant or strategic might seem acceptable after that last list, but many goals we set ourselves are neither of these in the great scheme of things. Will every single one of our goals be really significant or strategic – even to us? They may well be worthy, useful and desirable; but hugely significant and / or strategically imperative? I think not.

To be effective our goal must be simple or straightforward. Really? So a goal that is not simple or straightforward is not effective? Well, that’s it for mankind, isn’t it?

Actually, no. Many of the goals we set ourselves are complex, yet we follow them and achieve them despite the doomsayers of SMART. The Large Hadron Collider was built under the Swiss countryside. I have no idea what it does, how it does it or why anyone who does know might want to, but that highly complex objective was achieved.

Specific is a favourite candidate for the ‘S’. The case is that the goal needs to be concrete, detailed, precise, explicit, focused and action-oriented with a well-defined result.

Lovely, but I can think of many huge goals, all achieved, that had none of those characteristics. Churchill’s stated objective in 1940 was to win the war. It was as vague as that. He had no idea exactly how that could be done, when it would be achieved, or what form the victory might take. The rest is history.

When John Kennedy committed the USA to putting a man on the moon and bringing him safely back again there were neither vehicles to do it, nor the guidance systems to get them there. Less than 10 years later I watched it all on TV and cheered with relief.

So much for being specific.

Stretching goals are those that promote some form of discernable personal growth. Yet there are serious, important goals that do not necessarily deliver on that front at all.

Getting our frail and ageing parent into a good social care environment might occupy all our efforts for a considerable period, although it is unlikely that we will feel we are better people at the end of it. Often, we will feel worse because of lingering guilt. Nevertheless it is clearly identifiable as a goal.

Succinct: if we are going to tick all those boxes – being concrete, detailed, precise, explicit, focused and action-oriented with a well-defined result – is succinct even possible?

If it is, then is it necessary? Sometimes a longer, fuller description paints a more colourful, seductive picture making it easier for us to visualize the outcome, to commit ourselves to its pursuit and helps us keep the whole project vibrant and alive.

If all our goals had to be synergistic (2+2=5) then there would far fewer goals. Of course, single-point goals will usually have spin-offs, but those are by-products or unintended consequences. Imposing genuine intended synergy as the prerequisite of good goal-setting sounds like severely over-egging all puddings. Nice if we can do it, but hardly necessary.

Finally, finally, systematic: I suspect this one came with one foot in the project manager’s camp. Again, it’s not an absolute, indispensable requirement for our common or garden goals. Someone like Benjamin Franklin was highly systematic and got great results. But goals are often reached despite the system used to search for them, rather than because of it.

The biggest problem with penicillin was producing enough of it. Florey and another researcher travelled from Britain to the U.S. to talk to chemical manufacturers. Corn (maize) was tried as the nutrient base and it yielded almost 500 times as much as it had before. That helped, but more vigorous and productive strains of the mould were also needed, and one of the best came from a rotting cantaloupe in the market at Peoria, Illinois.

Systematic (the maize) helped, but serendipity (the cantaloupe) was also necessary.

Serendipity helps more often than SMART protagonists care to admit. The amazing story of post-it notes are another case in point.

There are other, possibly undiscovered, ‘S’s:

How about saleable – so that we can get others on board?

How about seaworthy – so we know that the goal will float?

How about sanguineous – so that we’re always full-bloodied about our objectives?

With so many stars to steer our ship by, how on earth is the ‘S’ from SMART going to help us?

SMART and its ‘S’ are touted as necessary and sufficient for all goals. Clearly, they are not.