Introducing 

Prezi AI.

Your new presentation assistant.

Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.

Loading…
Transcript

The Hedgehog and The Fox

“The fox is a cunning creature, able to devise a myriad of complex strategies for sneak attacks upon the hedgehog. Day in and day out, the fox circles around the hedgehog’s den, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. Fast, sleek, beautiful, fleet of foot, and crafty—the fox looks like the sure winner. The hedgehog, on the other hand, is a dowdier creature, looking like a genetic mix-up between a porcupine and a small armadillo. He waddles along, going about his simple day, searching for lunch and taking care of his home.

The fox waits in cunning silence at the juncture in the trail. The hedgehog, minding his own business, wanders right into the path of the fox. “Aha, I’ve got you now!” thinks the fox. He leaps out, bounding across the ground, lightning fast. The little hedgehog, sensing danger, looks up and thinks, “Here we go again. Will he ever learn?” Rolling up into a perfect little ball, the hedgehog becomes a sphere of sharp spikes, pointing outward in all directions. The fox, bounding toward his prey, sees the hedgehog defense and calls off the attack. Retreating back to the forest, the fox begins to calculate a new line of attack. Each day, some version of this battle between the hedgehog and the fox takes place, and despite the greater cunning of the fox, the hedgehog always wins.

Berlin extrapolated from this little parable to divide people into two basic groups: foxes and hedgehogs. Foxes pursue many ends at the same time and see the world in all its complexity. They are “scattered or diffused, moving on many levels,” says Berlin, never integrating their thinking into one overall concept or unifying vision. Hedgehogs, on the other hand, simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea, a basic principle or concept that unifies and guides everything. It doesn’t matter how complex the world, a hedgehog reduces all challenges and dilemmas to simple—indeed almost simplistic—hedgehog ideas. For a hedgehog, anything that does not somehow relate to the hedgehog idea holds no relevance.

Princeton professor Marvin Bressler pointed out the power of the hedgehog during one of our long conversations: “You want to know what separates those who make the biggest impact from all the others who are just as smart? They’re hedgehogs.” Freud and the unconscious, Darwin and natural selection, Marx and class struggle, Einstein and relativity, Adam Smith and division of labor—they were all hedgehogs. They took a complex world and simplified it. “Those who leave the biggest footprints,” said Bressler, “have thousands calling after them, ‘Good idea, but you went too far!’ ”

To be clear, hedgehogs are not stupid. Quite the contrary. They understand that the essence of profound insight is simplicity. What could be more simple than e = mc2? What could be simpler than the idea of the unconscious, organized into an id, ego, and superego? What could be more elegant than Adam Smith’s pin factory and “invisible hand?” No, the hedgehogs aren’t simpletons; they have a piercing insight that allows them to see through complexity and discern underlying patterns. Hedgehogs see what is essential, and ignore the rest.” -Adaptation from JIm Collins, Good to Great

Jim Collins-Good to Great

Hedgehog Concept: In his book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't, author Jim Collins discusses the "Hedgehog Concept." He maintains that it's "not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at. The distinction is absolutely critical."

Excerpt from Good to Great:

Picture an egg. Day after day, it sits there. No one pays attention to it. No one notices it. Certainly no one takes a picture of it or puts it on the cover of a celebrity-focused business magazine. Then one day, the shell cracks and out jumps a chicken.

All of a sudden, the major magazines and newspapers jump on the story: “Stunning Turnaround at Egg!” and “The Chick Who Led the Breakthrough at Egg!” From the outside, the story always reads like an overnight sensation—as if the egg had suddenly and radically altered itself into a chicken.

Now picture the egg from the chicken's point of view.

While the outside world was ignoring this seemingly dormant egg, the chicken within was evolving, growing, developing—changing. From the chicken’s point of view, the moment of breakthrough, of cracking the egg, was simply one more step in a long chain of steps that had led to that moment. Granted, it was a big step—but it was hardly the radical transformation that it looked like from the outside.

It’s a silly analogy, but then our conventional way of looking at change is no less silly. Everyone looks for the “miracle moment” when “change happens.” But ask the good-to-great executives when change happened. They cannot pinpoint a single key event that exemplified their successful transition.

Impact and Learnings

https://sites.google.com/a/dpsk12.net/epmp-emily-reilly/coaching

*Be a hedgehog, with the adaptability and foresight of the fox.

*Follow a simple vision

*Remain passionate

*Remember what you're good at and what others are good at

*Keep growing until you break out of the shell!

The Hedgehog Vision: From "Good to Great"

Three overlapping circles:

*What lights your fire ("passion")?

*What could you be best in the world at ("best at")?

*What makes you money ("driving resource")?

Yet a TEC can learn from the Fox...

The Theory

What does my school need me to be right now?

  • Essay by philosopher Isaiah Berlin
  • Based on Ancient Greek Parable by Archilochus:
  • "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."

The Fox

The Hedgehog

http://www.jimcollins.com/media_topics/hedgehog-concept.html#audio=79

  • sleek, sly, shrewd animals
  • draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a single idea
  • examples: Aristotle, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Molière
  • pursue many goals and interests at the same time. Because of this wide variety of interests and strategies, their thinking is scattered and unfocused, and they are limited in what they can achieve in the long run.
  • slow and steady
  • hedgehogs view the world through the lens of a single defining idea
  • examples: Darwin, Adam Smith, Plato, Lucretius, Dante, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche
  • They know how to simplify a complex world into a single, organizing idea—the kind of basic principle that unifies, organizes, and guides all decisions. That’s not to say hedgehogs are simplistic.
  • people often overlook them because they're quiet and unassuming.
  • able to simplify the world into profound ideasand focus on one overarching vision. It's this principle that guides everything they do, and helps them succeed against all odds.

The Fox and the Hedgehog

"In each of these dramatic, remarkable, good-to-great corporate transformations, we found the same thing: There was no miracle moment. Instead, a down-to-earth, pragmatic, committed-to-excellence process—a framework—kept each company, its leaders, and its people on track for the long haul."

"It was an inherently iterative process—consisting of piercing questions, vigorous debate, resolute action, and autopsies without blame—a cycle repeated over and over by the right people, infused with the brutal facts, and guided by the three circles."

The Egg/Hedgehog at Valverde

*As it was: Too many initiatives, goals, constantly shifting systems and structures

*As it will be: hope for a simple mission, clarified vision

*Learned: we need patience with transformation externally, urgency within.

*Learned: it takes a long time to adopt new skills - be patient with myself

*Work on one thing at a time

*Constantly check back: does this align with what my goal is? what we need? what i need

* Asking myself: What am I good at? What am I passionate about? What is going to drive change - leads to distributive leadership.

Learn more about creating dynamic, engaging presentations with Prezi