Blue Tits or Robins?

These are UK common garden birds by the way! Other birds are available that illustrate the same condition. In evolution it has been researched that birds are second to humans in their ability to learn and adapt to their environment. Within the species however there are different rates of learning that broadly can be split into two groupings, one is solitary learning the other is team learning both can produce positive results but team learning is both faster and more adaptable.

In the case of the blue tits these agile birds flock in small groups and have a wide territory of operation while the equally adaptive robin is a pretty solitary species that is very territorial and so protective of its patch that they spend most of their lives defending it.

In terms of learning about a new food supply the characterisitics of the two birds illustrates the power of team learning.

In the UK, milk used to be delivered to the home in glass bottles, these were open topped initially and then sealed with an aluminium cap and always left on the doorstep from early dawn. The blue tits discovered the rich cream that formed on top of the open bottles and helped themselves and within a short period the whole National population of blue tits had learned about the new food supply. When the aluminium cap was introuduced the tits quickly adapted and learnt to peck through the cap to continue to enjoy their morning cream breakfast. This too was learned by all blue tits across the country spread by the small flocks via their habit of covering a wide territory and teaching the new skill to other flocks who broadcast the tactic in a feathered version of viral marketing.

The robins also learned to drink the cream but only those robins that worked it out for themselves and certainly the author can vouch for the fact that though it was commonplace to see a blue tit drink from the bottle it was incredibly rare to see a robin exhibit the same behaviour.

Today both species don't get cream anymore, the introduction of the tamper proof plastic bottle and low fat milk has seen to that! The robin is back to coming up with a solitary cunning plan while the bue tits have innovated and have moved on to dominate the bird feed tables, having worked out how to deal with the various devices humans use to store and despatch food.

However, for us humans it is wise to look at learning from the blue tits learning style to how we structure our organisational learning. Here are the three key elements to ensure rapid learning takes place across an organisation.

1. Innovation - you need to allow the invention of new behaviour
2. Social Propagation - you need to allow a process for direct communication of the new behaviour
3. Mobility - you need to allow 'flocking' to happen to spread the new behaviour over as wide an area as possible

The other aspect of this formula for it's ultimate success is that the innovative behaviour is of genuine benefit to the whole flock or organisation.