Josef Lhotský (evolutionary biologist): If bacteria can agree, why can’t people at work?

In this episode of the CEO na ostří nože podcast, we talk to Josef Lhotský, who studied theoretical and evolutionary biology at the Faculty of Science of Charles University, specialising in symbiotic relationships. In 2015, he left academia for the corporate world, and today he works as an agile coach helping companies through change. What does evolutionary biology have to do with company culture? According to Lhotský, everything. A bacterium behaves exactly like a well-run company: it watches its environment, sets priorities, innovates, takes reasonable risks and tries to grow sustainably.

For a long time, people believed evolution was all about tooth and claw, and that the strongest wins. But in the second half of the 20th century, biologists discovered that one of the biggest driving forces of evolution is symbiosis, in other words cooperation. Every living creature is really a conglomerate of many species that have to work together. It’s the same in companies, Lhotský says. Competition won’t disappear; it will only get tougher. But the way through it isn’t a fight to the death. It’s partnerships in which both sides make the most of their potential, first within the company and then beyond it.

Why are people at work so reluctant to cooperate? Lhotský puts part of the blame on school. Whole generations were taught to keep their eyes on their own desk, not to help each other and to see every failure as bad. They then arrive at work unable to cooperate and afraid they’ll be punished for trying. Communication is also an active process that has to be repeated. Lhotský compares it to brushing your teeth: you do it again every day. Even bacteria that have lived in symbiosis with insects for two hundred million years sometimes “fail to agree”. And yet they achieve remarkable things. During marine bioluminescence, billions of bacteria coordinate to light up an area the size of a Czech region.

The biggest help for people in a company, Lhotský says, is a clear vision from leadership. Leaders do the most harm to themselves when they don’t lead and hide away like a captain locked in his cabin. Many top managers also don’t hear feedback because they’re afraid of it. Anyone who really wants it can’t settle for the first answer, “everything’s fine”. They have to keep asking and mean it, until the other person relaxes and tells the truth. Lhotský compares leading people to raising children. At first, you need clear rules and less freedom. Over time, though, the space should widen and people should get the chance to change the rules themselves. The opposite approach, where everyone can do everything from day one, doesn’t work in larger groups, in his experience.

An agile transformation brings value to every layer of a company, just a different value each time. Leadership gains the ability to respond to the environment faster, and employees get more freedom and less top-down management. But they often aren’t ready for it and are afraid of responsibility, especially when transformations come with layoffs. That’s why Lhotský created a course called “Corporate Biology” at Česká spořitelna. Using examples from nature, he showed people that agile principles aren’t just a fad but have worked in our cells for a billion and a half years. Big transformations, in nature and in companies, are accompanied by “mass extinctions”, he says. When oxygen levels rose in the atmosphere, much of life at the time died out. Those who survived, however, gained a far more efficient metabolism thanks to oxygen. In a company, “dying out” doesn’t have to mean the end; it might simply mean moving to a different game where you’ll be happier.

What else will you learn in the podcast?

• What bacteria and a well-run company have in common

• Why cooperation, not just strength, wins in evolution

• Why people at work struggle to cooperate and what school has to do with it

• How a top manager can tell they need feedback, and how to really get it

• Why you should set the rules first and only then give people freedom

• What mass extinctions in nature teach us about corporate transformations

According to Josef Lhotský, change is the only constant in our lives. But it has to be sustainable. A team needs time to digest what’s new and settle into a new normal, just not stay there too long. And everyone should know why they do what they do. Then it turns out that a lot of things don’t need doing at all.