How God Uses “Ordinary People” to Change the World Sýnishorn

The Power of the Principle of Seven

I’m sure you’ve noticed birds flying together in one large formation at sunrise or sunset. The birds are starlings and the formation is called a murmuration. Did you realize that for starlings, a common enemy’s attack causes their seemingly spontaneous cohesion into a coordinated, pulsating flock?

The primary motivator to unite is survival.

When a flock is under attack from a predator, the principal of seven engages with lightning speed, optimizing team cohesion with individual effort. The group responds in unison and can’t be dispersed into individual subgroups. It becomes an emergent, living organism, which is never led by a single individual. They are governed collectively by all of the flock members.

When one starling changes direction or speed, each of the other birds reacts to the change with seamless agility. The information travels like a bolt of lightning across the flock with practically no degradation. This allows a starling on one side of the flock to react to what the others are sensing all the way on the opposite side of the flock, regardless of the size. This enlarges what researchers call the “effective perceptive range” of every starling, which greatly enhances their ability to avoid a full-on strike from a diving falcon.

Just imagine how incredibly difficult this makes it for the falcon to focus on any one bird at a time. It is no longer diving in on an easy meal of one hapless, unaware starling. The principal of seven neighbors unleashes an agile, quick symmetry that leaves the falcon to attack and hit only air, missing all the starlings. 

Unity was forged from the clear and present danger of a vicious predator with one goal, to kill the prey. The predator longs to see the flock scatter. In disorganized chaos, the prey can be seen, targeted, and subdued. Success for the starlings is only possible with one goal—unity.

What a powerful truth for any organization! 

It struck me how the idea of commonality can drive cohesion: a common goal, a common belief, a common interest, etc. But a common enemy? There is something more visceral that quickly prioritizes and clarifies what is important when your people are facing something that doesn’t care about your various beliefs, interests, squabbles, and differences. 

If something or someone has a goal to annihilate something you and others hold dear, you have a common enemy that can cause one collective heartbeat where previously there were many. People start to pay attention and care about those in their immediate surroundings. Almost everyone has connections with at least seven people around them. 

What if all your volunteers or employees in your organization began to pay acute attention and serve their seven closest neighbors? What if those groups of seven naturally connected with other groups of seven? What if the groups of seven continued to expand rapidly? 

That is what a common enemy can do. It can start a murmuration within your organization that spreads into the public and requires no central leader but depends on ordinary people leveraging their influence on those around them. That is the power of the principle of seven.