Which Type of Explorer Are You? Lessons From The Great Tit

A three-year-old turns a stolen maxi pad into a bird, a plane, and a crown - no hesitation, no second-guessing. Three completely different uses for one object in about fifteen seconds.

That moment leads to an unexpected question: why do some of us dive straight at the unfamiliar while others hang back and watch? The answer comes from decades of research on a small British songbird with a name that still makes people laugh - the great tit.

Scientists have repeatedly found two distinct exploration styles. Fast explorers move immediately and commit hard. Slow explorers sample, check, and stay adaptable long after the fast ones have already locked in. The obvious question seems to be how to create more fast explorers. Nature, however, has been answering a different question all along.

This episode explores why neither style wins, why the very trait that helps someone commit quickly is also the one that makes them slower to let go, and what it costs a team, a family, or a friendship group when everyone responds to the unfamiliar in the same way.

Sometimes the bad question is the only way to find the good one.

References

1. Verbeek, M.E.M., Drent, P.J., & Wiepkema, P.R. (1994). Consistent individual differences in early exploratory behaviour of male great tits. Animal Behaviour, 48(5).

2. Dingemanse, N.J., Both, C., Drent, P.J., & Tinbergen, J.M. (2004). Fitness consequences of avian personalities in a fluctuating environment. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 271(1541).

S3E03

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Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

You know that feeling when you're about to get someone into trouble and you just let it happen anyway? Yeah. This is one of those stories. It's a tale of a three-year-old, a period pad, and an unfortunately named bird that changed how I make space for people who explore new ideas differently. A few years ago, my sister left me in charge of my niece in a store. I think she just ducked off for a few minutes to the shop next door or something. My niece was about three or four at the time, happily parked in a pram, auntie duty. I got this. Then I turn around and she's reached under the seat into my sister's bag and that whole tray thing, and pulled out a maxi pad, the full length surfboard, still wrapped in those child alluring, bright, almost Ken Don colours. Now, I had a good few seconds where I could have stepped in, rescued the situation, been the responsible adult. Instead, I watched. She unwraps it like it's a Christmas morning or it's a birthday or something, you know, with those little fingers and that face that was a almost a battleground for focus and wonder at the same time. I can see it now. Once she has it unfurled, first it's a bird, I think. She's flapping it around in front of her almost like a seagull or something. Then the same pad evolves into an aeroplane. And then it's a crown. How fitting. She'd peeled off that sticky strip protector. She plonks it on her head and just sits it there, absolutely delighted with herself. And I am gone. I've got my head thrown back, shoulders shaking, you can picture it. The two fingers that she's given to any design rules and social etiquette was just a joy. Three completely different uses for the same object in about 15 seconds. No hesitation, no embarrassment, no hang on, is this the right way to use this? It was just ooh, what else could this be? And then my sister came back, mid-crown, wondering why the shop owner and the other couple of customers that were in the store and I were all laughing. Mortified, doesn't even begin to cover it. I'm Pia, and this is Feral by Design. Long after Princess Pads was decrowned, and my sister and I were back on speaking terms, I'm kidding, of course, she actually loved it. I couldn't stop thinking about those 15 or so seconds. Bird plane crown. My niece wasn't trying to be creative. She was just exploring and at speed. For a really long time now with my clients, I introduced being childlike, not childish, into problem-solving arenas as a deliberate tool that you can temporarily switch on and off to think differently. So I knew that worked. But watching Princess Pads that day left me with a different question. Could I create or unlock more of that? Her, that kind of interaction with the unknown and novelty, with my clients. That instinct to pick up an unfamiliar thing and turn it over and see what else it could become. So at the time I was neck deep in my biomimicry studies. When something curious happened, I'd catch myself thinking, I wonder if nature's already solved this one. So I turned to Nature here to explore how animals handle the unfamiliar or novel, specifically the costs and benefits of their approach. I wanted to find ideas I could apply in my own work with clients. So I dug around and I stumbled across one of my favourite named creatures. The Great Tit. Yes, grow up. I'm trying very hard. This gorgeous little songbird with the curious name. Picture something smaller than your palm. It has a black hood or head over it, and it's really pretty actually. It's got these white cheeks and a really bright yellow breast with a distinct black stripe down the middle. Scientists have been quietly following some of them for decades, studying their behaviours and personalities, but it's this work around exploration behavior that caught my eye back then. Researchers placed the birds into completely unfamiliar environments and then simply watch them. Some launch themselves around the room like a like a kid in the candy store, exploring every single point possible. These are called fast explorers. Others barely move. They sit and watch, then they gradually begin exploring. These are somewhat unfairly called slow explorers. The fast explorers are brilliant at getting going, but the speed comes at a cost. Less checking and double checking. They're really fast to commit and really slow to uncommit when things change. The slower explorers are brilliant at taking in information before they do a move, sampling continuously and still checking long after the fast ones have already decided which is the best path. They're really good at catching the moment conditions have shifted and being able to adapt because they never locked into one path early. It's making me think actually, we had a team working on a, I'll say, a new beverage concept. And early on, one person on the team locked onto one of the concepts very quickly. It was still a barely formed concept. They really championed it and rallied the room. And then weeks later, we were in the middle of the project and a brand conflict emerged. Out of nowhere, as far as most of us were concerned. And this person was the last one in the room to accept that it had changed anything. And you could see the struggle was real. But two others in the working group had already flagged it as potentially on the horizon. And that's not because they were soothsayers and predicted it. It was because they'd never actually let that brand question go. They kept checking in on that as it was developing in the background. One of the key takeaways for me from the strategies and behaviors of these little songbirds is there isn't a better exploration style. There's only a better fit for the conditions. Each seems to do better under different conditions, which is likely part of why nature keeps both around. So this changed how I view my innovation teams. I started out looking for more of that fast instinctive engagement and how I could generate that and instill that in my teams. I'll be honest, I wanted to know how to manufacture more fast explorers, more people willing to lean into the unfamiliar and generate first and ask questions later. That's the question I took to nature, but I came away with something completely different. It's not about designing just for speed and enthusiasm. It's about designing for both exploration strategies and designing them into the system. The same thing that helps someone commit to an idea quickly is often the same thing that makes them slower to let go of it later. Have you noticed that? You can't ask someone to be the fastest to decide and commit and then also be the fastest to adapt and pivot. Those strengths often pull in opposite directions. Nature doesn't have a favorite strategy here. It just makes sure enough of both of them are in the group. So what actually changed for me? I stopped trying to change people. Instead, I changed what I asked of them. Early in a project, when we're exploring possibilities and we're an expansionist, I protect the people who are generating and throwing out the unlikely ideas and potential solutions before they shut down too quickly. Later, when we're making the real decisions and we're looking at spending real money, I'm listening much harder to the people asking awkward questions and spotting what everyone else has missed. Same team, different contribution. If everyone approaches the unfamiliar in exactly the same way, the team loses something. Nature keeps both strategies around because each sees something the other doesn't. Our cheeky little song words today changed something else for me individually, too. When I first came across that research, I didn't just think about my clients. I ran myself through the filter as well. And I came back as a fast explorer. Quick to move, quick to land on an idea, and if I'm honest, sometimes slower to let go once I've landed on something in terms of a direction. So over the last decade or so, I've deliberately trained myself to pause, to keep gathering information, and to challenge the idea I've already fallen in love with. Not because I've become a slow explorer, but because I've become more flexible in how I respond. And in fact, these days, I probably overdo it. I've become so practiced at holding ideas open, turning them over, questioning my first response and resisting the urge to land too quickly, that sometimes the harder job for me is knowing when I've explored enough. I've just had a thought, it was around this same time actually, I was working on a client project with a concept that we had come up with that I absolutely loved personally. One of the clients, the project sponsor, loved it too. And the early signs and the testing and it all lined up with trends and things like that, it looked quite promising. But the rest of the team, from a technical point of view, never quite came with us. And it certainly became a question around scalability, etc. as well. And so we parked it. And after that it became a bit of a running joke. Anytime I got particularly enthusiastic about a new idea in subsequent projects, someone would grin, I'm laughing now, and say, Oh god, here comes Pia with her green roofs again. Still makes me laugh. To be clear, I still think it was a good idea. Which probably tells you everything you need to know about how difficult it is to let go once you're locked on, even with a decade of practice. These days, when I feel myself locking onto an idea that quickly, I've created one private check-in before I push it again. Am I responding to new information? Or am I simply repeating the same argument? If it's the second one, that's usually my cue to stop. If you're more a slow explorer, maybe it's asking yourself, have I gathered enough now? Or am I just delaying the very first step? Different exploration styles, not personality flaws. And here's the more interesting question. Who's missing? Because if your whole family or your whole leadership team or your friendship group even all reacts the same way, nature would probably suggest you're missing half a system. Something else I had completely overlooked in that paper shop a decade ago. This bit's not the biology talking, by the way. This is just something I've noticed since. My niece wasn't the only person in that story. My sister was. My niece wasn't embarrassed. She'd done exactly what a three-year-old does. My sister walked back into a shop to find her daughter wearing a maxi pad as a crown on her head. So my sister wasn't any less curious. She simply had a different job in that moment. She was carrying responsibility. I see versions of that everywhere now. One person throws out the strange and stretchy idea, and another quietly starts calculating the consequences. Because if this goes pear-shaped, whose phone rings? I'm Pia, and this is Feral by Design. Here's the birds who don't get to choose their names. And one creative little niece. It's actually her birthday this week. Ten years on, still creative. Happy birthday, Wi Fi. Keep asking, what else could this be?