Dominance, efficiency, and the trap of deskilling.

"The Lion King," where Simba is the prince appointed to succeed Mufasa, has created a highly distorted view of the social organization of lions. Nepotism, or the chance for offspring to benefit from their parents' rank, is present in some animal species, but not in lions. Ironically, it can be observed in the less popular spotted hyenas.

In collective imagination, lions are the symbols of stability, but they are not. They lead the pride for only a few years until a group of younger and more vigorous lions shows up and, after a bloody struggle, takes over the pride.

The most valuable managerial lesson we can learn from lions is that success is not permanent. Sooner or later, someone more suitable will come along and start a new leadership era. To avoid succumbing, it is essential to maintain skills and motivation, allowing oneself to reinvent and remain integrated, thus avoiding being kicked out of the group.

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Lions are unique among felines that lead a truly social life and are the only large carnivores that hunt cooperatively.

A lion group, known as a pride, is a relatively stable organization that can last for several decades. The group forms around a core of related females who live between 15 and 18 years. Not all females who reach adulthood (around 3 years) remain in the group; some are expelled and rarely accepted by another pride. Although they may bear cubs by mating with solitary males, the cubs rarely survive, making it uncommon for a solitary female to become the matriarch of a new pride.

To prevent inbreeding, young males around the age of three leave their natal pride and continue to live in all-male gangs, challenging each other to establish a hierarchy typically culminating in a pair of dominant lions. When this gang of males reaches full maturity, around 4-5 years, they are ready to take control of one pride by challenging the coalition of males that currently governs it.

Typically, the younger males prevail over the older lions, forcing the defeated males to leave the group.

The succession to leadership is extremely violent, not only for the adult lions involved in the fight but also for the massacre of the cubs that belong to the defeated group.

The fate awaiting defeated lions is worse than that of solitary females because males, being hefty beasts weighing around 220 kg, are less agile hunters and, having lost the habit of hunting (a task typically undertaken by females within the pride), they are compelled to scavenge. Additionally, due to injuries sustained in fights, their lifespan outside the group is very limited.

Generally, the dominance period of pride lasts about three years, when the males are between 5 and 8 years old. Considering the different average lifespans of males and females, a snapshot of a lion population in a given territory at a given moment would show that 85% of lions, regardless of sex and age, live in groups, while 15% live solitarily.

Another interesting managerial lesson that we can take from lions is about ambivalence of efficient organizations. Division of labor, which increases group efficiency, on the other hand, decreases individual survival opportunities outside the group.

This trade-off can be observed in all organizations.

To increase efficiency and reduce marginal costs, specialization and task distribution are necessary; the consequence is general deskilling, where no individual can be able to fulfill any task end-to-end.

If we imagine this as a fault in organizational process design, the example of lions demonstrates that even in nature, better strategies have not evolved.

Deskilling is an underrated problem because in a stable context, it impacts individual survival, but in a fast-paced environment, it significantly affects organizational resilience.

Therefore, it is important to maintain a high level of critical thinking to prevent the risk of deskilling both at an individual and collective level.

As shown by the history of lions, social living generates a high level of interdependence among group members, to the point that no one is able to live alone anymore.

In a context of increasing artificial intelligence expansion, the creation of complex environments where humans and machines interact makes the system simultaneously more performant but also more fragile.

For instance, in a few years, machines could exclusively interpret radiographs. However, for AI to achieve a diagnostic quality equivalent to or better than an experienced doctor, it requires many more examinations. Then, at what level should the comparative calculation of efficiency between human labor and artificial intelligence be set?

Main references:

·????? B.C.R. Bertram. ?– The social system of lions (1975)

·????? D. Scheel and C. Packer. – Group hunting behaviour of lions: a search for cooperation (1991)

·????? C. Packer and A. E. Pusey - Cooperation and competition within coalitions of male lions: kin selection or game theory?? (1982)