I have been impressed by the following story in a corporate strategy book. It seems to suggest the importance of balance between theory and practice. Excessive theoretical view point can lead to disastrous consequences. I think that there may be a lot of bees and few flies in organizations; especially bureaucratic organizations. Probably, more and more “fly type” stuff will be required in unpredictable times.
Karl Weick describes an experiment by Gordon Sin:
If you place in a bottle half a dozen bees and the same number of flies, and lay the bottle horizontally, with its base to the window, you will find that the bees will persist, till they die of exhaustion or hunger, in their endeavour to discover an opening through the glass; while the flies, in less than two minutes, will all have sallied forth through the neck on the opposite side…. It is the bees’ love of flight, it is their very intelligence, that is their undoing in this experiment. They evidently imagine that the issue from every prison must be where the light shines clearest; and they act in accordance, and persist in too-logical action. To bees glass is a supernatural mystery …. And, the greater their intelligence, the more inadmissable, more incomprehensible, will the strange obstacle appear. Whereas the featherbrained flies, careless of logic … flutter wildly hither and thither, and meeting here the good fortune that often waits on the simple …. Necessarily end up by discovering the friendly opening that restores their liberty to them. ( Quoted by Peters and Waterman, 1983)