Recently I was reading an interesting book on “Mental Models”, I came across an interesting concept called “Butterfly Effect”. The more I read about this, the more I could relate some of the recent developments and business strategies to this concept. We can also call this concept the “Ripple Effect”.
More recently scientific researchers have discovered that “if a butterfly flaps its wings (small cause) in China it can contribute to the cause of a tornado (big effect) in Kansas (for example – Impact of Covid on the world)”. The butterfly effect explains how small changes in initial conditions produce enormous effects, though often distant in time and place. The new understanding is that small causes trigger a chain of events.
An interesting incident happened during the World Cup (Cricket) in 2019. Pakistan was almost on the verge of victory and just needed 44 runs to win off 35 balls. They were cruising but then bad luck struck. The Australian captain took the review on the last remaining second and it turned out to be a legit dismissal. Pakistan lost. Even then, Pakistan equalled their wins with New Zealand but didn’t qualify for semis due to a lesser Net Run Rate.
Then followed the interesting part (Butterfly / Ripple Effect)
This resulted in Coach Mickey Arthur getting sacked and replaced by Misbah ul Haq. He (Misbah) inducted A. Shahzad & U. Akmal out of nowhere in a T20 series against Sri Lanka and screwed the combination of the then no.1 T20 team. Misbah sacked T20 captain Sarfaraz on the series loss and later inducted Usman Qadir (who had no plans to represent Pakistan), Mohd. Irfan (who didn’t play an international game in 4 years) on the Australia tour and appointed a proven failed captain Azhar Ali as a test captain. Pakistan team now stands at 7th in Test, 4th in T201 & 6th in ODI rankings which will go down further after a defeat against Zimbabwe.
I remember in mid-Nineties tyre companies were trying their level best to convert Car tyres from Bias tyres (Old Technology) to Radials tyres (New and the latest technology ). I was based in a small town of Haryana (Northern India) and it was really challenging to sell even a small quantity of Car Radials. The major reason was that customers were not prepared to give up their comfort zones of tried and tested bias tyres. The major opinion-makers were car mechanics and they had no clue on what a car radial was. Since mechanics were equivalent to Google’s back then and they being the major source of knowledge were “Anti Radials” as they did not want to admit to the customers’ that they had no knowledge on the subject. We identified this issue and started a campaign for market educations (Mechanics & customers education). The result was that within a few months we had major mechanics as our key spokespersons and advocating Radials and its advantages to the customers. We could create the Butterfly Effect and the rest is history.
Recently I was travelling to Chennai and there met one of the major dealers of Plywood. The dealers had another business of manufacturing steel utensils and were the top brand in Andhra. Many competitors tried to capture their market but were not able to as their brand pull was massive. Suddenly they realized that visibility of another brand was increasing, particularly in Vijayawada, which was their forte. They analyzed the reason and found that the strategy adopted by their competitor was to capture smaller markets near Vijayawada first and then create a “Ripple Effect” of demand for bigger towns i.e Vijayawada. This is what Chanakya did to win the war against Dhananand. Capture far off areas first and then attack the major epicentre.
Some key steps involved in creating a positive “Ripple Effect”
Begin with the End in Mind
Align your team to the goals – most of the times people don’t understand the objective and they do it just for the sake of doing it. Sharing the objective helps.
Find your Niche
Identify the major influencers in the process or in other words they can be bottlenecks too – in the above examples Mechanics (Bottleneck as well as opinion makers) and small-town dealers who were major customers of big town wholesalers.
Be consistent with your efforts – the major scaling up will happen after consistent efforts.
Ripple Effect and Butterfly Effect help us to understand the value of small steps in Business and Career. Small or baby steps are the basis for bigger steps. Identify the bottlenecks and work on basics to create the impact.
Very nicely articulated. Different approach to the problem
Superb Article. Will put the learning into immediate application.
Excellent 👍🌹