it was 4:30 in the morning when I first
saw it a jaw-dropping phenomenon of epic
proportions I’d gotten up early one day
to read to research and write you have
to fight for those quiet moments in my
home with three small children there’s a
lot of noise and crying sometimes the
children cry too but I was sitting there
at my dining room table and I watched a
video that captivated me and it sent me
on a journey of learning and I can’t
wait to share with you the lessons that
I found along the way it was a video of
a murmuration a murmuration is a natural
phenomenon with starlings that flock and
fly together moving effortlessly through
the sky it’s like a bird ballet that
comes to life and the bird consistently
avoid collisions and there’s thousands
sometimes hundreds of thousands of birds
in these formations it is simply
breathtaking my name is Lukas Ramirez
and I really am so excited to be here
today to share with you lessons that
I’ve learned from this natural
phenomenon and new research that has
come out on it they are lessons for how
to unleash unity in our deeply divided
world if you’d like an enhanced
experience to my presentation you can
download all of my slides for free with
bonus content there’s even further links
for reading and research that you can do
in there just go to Lukas Ramirez org
slash TEDx and you can go on your own
journey of learning our world is deeply
divided we have what I call a crisis of
fragmentation and the fault lines run
deep in all sorts of directions
I mean politically our camps are at war
with one another
instead of reaching out across the aisle
and in recent political campaigns there
have been more landslide victories
showing we’ve even migrated
geographically to be around people who
think just like us
racially recent demonstrations show that
there are still a lot of unresolved
issues in our communities in our
churches theology an ideology bifurcate
our faith communities and the words of
Martin Luther King jr. still ring true
that Sunday mornings are still one of
the most fragmented and segregated times
of the week even in the nucleus of the
home the high divorce rate shows that
this crisis of fragmentation has hit us
and our homes and the list goes on
gender race class socioeconomic status
we have a crisis of fragmentation but we
were designed for more even our
neurobiological and social makeup show
that we were hardwired for unity and
collective movement not isolation and
independence we know in our hearts we
all crave unity that’s why even on our
American coins we have the phrase e
pluribus unum out of many one we know
that a divided Kingdom cannot stand but
this unity still eludes us like a child
grasping a handful of sand or like a
voice continually around the next corner
and the voice is just getting farther
these days we’re at our worst when we’re
divided but the opposite is also true
when we come together and when we can
unite the results can be unbelievable
consider that the most successful
businesses movements teams and
organizations of history are those that
brought together their diverse parts
into one cohesive whole even research
from over 300 global companies shows
some interesting statistics
organizations and businesses that have
diversity of gender on their teams
outperform their competition financially
by 15% but it gets even better
businesses that have ethnically diverse
teams outperform their competition by
35% unity within diversity has huge
payoffs but the payoffs aren’t just
financial when we can collaborate we can
pioneer new frontiers for medicine
education foster care even fighting
slavery and human trafficking just two
weeks before I visited the Philippines
in 2013 the three main Christian
denominations of that country wrote a
statement of solidarity committing that
they were going to pool their resources
to fight human trafficking and slavery
in their country a huge problem there or
consider the Church in Kigali Rwanda
that is offering the highest level of
relief to people with HIV and AIDS in
the country what’s cool is that this
church is made up of people from both
the Hutus and the Tutsis tribes the two
tribes that nearly exterminated one
another in the 1994 genocide these
stories move us these movies of people
putting down their differences to unite
around our larger cause these are the
stories that we love to hear but when we
hear stories like that we’re left with a
bit of a question and that’s this are
those just a flash in the pan or can we
sustain any real movement to overcome
our crisis of fragmentation I am here to
give you hope to say yes we can move
beyond our divided state but we don’t
just need voices today to give us hope
and optimism we need people to actually
give us a roadmap for how to move
forward and when we have a path that
actually produces hope in us and maybe
just maybe we can look to nature
to give us some of that recent science
video capabilities with advanced
technology GPS tracking has all these
new technologies have allowed scientists
to study murmuration z’ in new ways and
the implications are groundbreaking as I
dove into this research and I began to
study the principles that are driving
this phenomenon I began to see that
these principles have broader
implications and applications you know
the science and nature has so many
lessons to help solve complex human
problems and this phenomenon has the
keys to unleashing collective movement
in our communities the way I like to say
it is this bird’s first taught us how to
fly and now they will teach us how to
unify we thank you as I dove deeper and
deeper and deeper into this fascinating
research on my journey of learning I
began to overlay an anthropological
perspective I began to pull in ideas
from system dynamics I began to pull in
ideas from organizational leadership and
what emerged was a tapestry of signposts
to help us move beyond our divided state
I’ve put together these ideas and our
first book that’s coming out it’s called
designed for more it’s coming out in
June of this year and I outlined seven
principles from the murmuration and this
first book is written specifically to
the Christian Church a community of
faith that has historically been divided
but was really designed to operate as
one then in my second book I’m gonna
apply the murmuration principles to a
broader audience so we can unleash
collective movement in our businesses
and in our communities so today I want
to just share two of those seven
principles so that you can walk out of
this room with something intensely
practical to do something that you can
wake up tomorrow and do to help us move
back our sile beyond our siloed and
divided state and the
principle is this within the phenomenon
the birds have an extreme focus on a
common strategy they have an extreme
focus on a common strategy originally
scientists wondered if the murmuration
was possible and why the murmuration was
occurring it could have been because the
birds were trying to generate heat and
warmth these formations generally occur
in later fall early winter and although
gathering warmth may be a beneficial
byproduct to the murmuration what the
new science shows is that the
murmuration is a direct response to a
predator that’s in the area the
peregrine falcon is one of these elite
predators it hovers high above its prey
and does blistering nose dives to pick
off an isolated bird it can get up to
200 miles an hour in its dive making it
the fastest mammal on the planet in
those moments I mean this is an elite
predator how do you defend against an
elite predator you unite and rather than
competing against one another the
starlings have realized that they need
to work together a common strategy to
defend against the real enemy in our
communities we have so often made our
neighbor or the other the enemy and
instead of working together with common
strategies for our cities we fight one
another it is time to redefine who the
right enemies are it’s time to generate
collective ideas for how to solve the
ails in our communities put down the
hateful judgmental and Prejudice ideas
that come from our in-group mentalities
from one another common strategy is
critical collective movement but common
strategy is not quite enough it needs to
work in tandem with the second principle
that I want to share with you today and
that is this the starlings know and
respond to their seven influential
neighbors first scientists wondered how
the speed and efficiency is possible
in the murmuration birds have
unbelievable reaction times in these
formations and they postulate it could
it be that the birds are responding to
others within a certain distance could
it be that they have some invisible
brain train transference going on the
new research is showing that the
starlings are responding to their seven
closest neighbors at any given time
there are seven neighbors regardless of
how tight it is regardless how it
expands and this produces efficiency
watch as relationships produce
efficiency let me put this in context
for you your average reaction time for
humans is about a hundred and ninety
eight milliseconds the average bird
reaction time is thirty eight
milliseconds pretty fast in the
murmuration the starlings reaction time
gets as low as 15 milliseconds this is
possible because they are completely
aware of their neighbors at any given
time and responding appropriately when
we begin to add common strategy and the
knowledge and response to our seven
influential neighbors something happens
and this too should give us great hope
because what we see in this phenomenon
is this concept complex order does not
require complex behavior let me say it
again complex order does not require
complex behavior when it comes to this
concept and idea of unity and moving
past our dividing walls we lose a lot of
hope really fast and we just sort of
throw our hands up in the air and we say
let’s not even try it
I’ll just stain my comfortable silo this
is much better over here and it seems so
hard and unreachable that we just quit
for the birds it’s not some crazy
complex thing that creates this unity
they stay true to their principles day
in and day out whether it’s snowing or
whether there’s a headwind whether it
freezing whatever the circumstance is
around it their behavior which isn’t
that complex produces complex order who
are the seven people for you do you have
seven people who are influencing you if
you’re ready to take on this challenge
and be part of the solution I challenge
you to find seven people who are going
to impact you and challenge you to view
the world differently the key is you’ve
got to find people that are diverse than
you find somebody from a different
generation find someone from a different
gender find somebody from a different
cultural background and then take the
posture of a learner because the whole
point of it is to learn and I allow them
to influence you that is something
intensely practical each of us can begin
to do if I could boil down these two
principles into just one key idea for
the two engines to collective movement
our relationships and strategy
relationships and strategy working in
tandem produces a near nuclear energy
for us to move into the state of
completion that we were designed for but
all of this comes with a warning a very
serious warning because if we unite and
we generate collective movement around
the wrong motive or around a wrong cause
the outcomes can be terrible history has
shown us that the unity of the selfish
and powerful produces oppression history
has also shown us that the unity of the
oppressed brings revolution but watch
this this last one this is the sweet
spot for change the unity of the humble
brings transformation the unity of the
selfish and powerful has oppressed
entire people groups in history has
shown us that and then when those people
are oppressed they unite and they rise
up they bring revolution
but revolutions have always been
associated with war and bloodshed and
sometimes they overthrow one regime just
to uh sure and another one but the
stories of history that have brought
lasting change to our communities are
those that have been led by humble
leaders who bring about transformation
where the old is gone and something new
comes to life these are the stories of
Nelson Mandela who helped overthrow
apartheid in South Africa these are the
stories of William Wilberforce
who helped overthrow slavery in England
or consider mother Teresa
the humble leader that showed us how to
love the oppressed and the outcast of
the world the humble servant leader is
the one that transforms their
communities and we need a unity of
people like that to change our
communities so there’s a lot of problems
in our world and I would propose to you
that unity within diversity is the
highest leverage thing that we can do to
solve our community ails it’s easy to
divide it comes natural but show me a
leader who can bring together people
that are diverse that is powerful what
if we began to murmur eight what if we
began to move in efficiency and power
finesse and beauty what if we could
respond to our neighbors and design
collective strategies for our world
what if we could redefine who the enemy
is and humbly serve our neighbor you can
be part of that movement in fact you’re
an irreplaceable part of the system you
have experienced talent giftings
perspective we need your story when we
begin to operate in our greater design
the outcomes could be limitless and we
could charter new waters to
imagine if we sparked a murmuration of
our own thank you so much [Applause]
saw it a jaw-dropping phenomenon of epic
proportions I’d gotten up early one day
to read to research and write you have
to fight for those quiet moments in my
home with three small children there’s a
lot of noise and crying sometimes the
children cry too but I was sitting there
at my dining room table and I watched a
video that captivated me and it sent me
on a journey of learning and I can’t
wait to share with you the lessons that
I found along the way it was a video of
a murmuration a murmuration is a natural
phenomenon with starlings that flock and
fly together moving effortlessly through
the sky it’s like a bird ballet that
comes to life and the bird consistently
avoid collisions and there’s thousands
sometimes hundreds of thousands of birds
in these formations it is simply
breathtaking my name is Lukas Ramirez
and I really am so excited to be here
today to share with you lessons that
I’ve learned from this natural
phenomenon and new research that has
come out on it they are lessons for how
to unleash unity in our deeply divided
world if you’d like an enhanced
experience to my presentation you can
download all of my slides for free with
bonus content there’s even further links
for reading and research that you can do
in there just go to Lukas Ramirez org
slash TEDx and you can go on your own
journey of learning our world is deeply
divided we have what I call a crisis of
fragmentation and the fault lines run
deep in all sorts of directions
I mean politically our camps are at war
with one another
instead of reaching out across the aisle
and in recent political campaigns there
have been more landslide victories
showing we’ve even migrated
geographically to be around people who
think just like us
racially recent demonstrations show that
there are still a lot of unresolved
issues in our communities in our
churches theology an ideology bifurcate
our faith communities and the words of
Martin Luther King jr. still ring true
that Sunday mornings are still one of
the most fragmented and segregated times
of the week even in the nucleus of the
home the high divorce rate shows that
this crisis of fragmentation has hit us
and our homes and the list goes on
gender race class socioeconomic status
we have a crisis of fragmentation but we
were designed for more even our
neurobiological and social makeup show
that we were hardwired for unity and
collective movement not isolation and
independence we know in our hearts we
all crave unity that’s why even on our
American coins we have the phrase e
pluribus unum out of many one we know
that a divided Kingdom cannot stand but
this unity still eludes us like a child
grasping a handful of sand or like a
voice continually around the next corner
and the voice is just getting farther
these days we’re at our worst when we’re
divided but the opposite is also true
when we come together and when we can
unite the results can be unbelievable
consider that the most successful
businesses movements teams and
organizations of history are those that
brought together their diverse parts
into one cohesive whole even research
from over 300 global companies shows
some interesting statistics
organizations and businesses that have
diversity of gender on their teams
outperform their competition financially
by 15% but it gets even better
businesses that have ethnically diverse
teams outperform their competition by
35% unity within diversity has huge
payoffs but the payoffs aren’t just
financial when we can collaborate we can
pioneer new frontiers for medicine
education foster care even fighting
slavery and human trafficking just two
weeks before I visited the Philippines
in 2013 the three main Christian
denominations of that country wrote a
statement of solidarity committing that
they were going to pool their resources
to fight human trafficking and slavery
in their country a huge problem there or
consider the Church in Kigali Rwanda
that is offering the highest level of
relief to people with HIV and AIDS in
the country what’s cool is that this
church is made up of people from both
the Hutus and the Tutsis tribes the two
tribes that nearly exterminated one
another in the 1994 genocide these
stories move us these movies of people
putting down their differences to unite
around our larger cause these are the
stories that we love to hear but when we
hear stories like that we’re left with a
bit of a question and that’s this are
those just a flash in the pan or can we
sustain any real movement to overcome
our crisis of fragmentation I am here to
give you hope to say yes we can move
beyond our divided state but we don’t
just need voices today to give us hope
and optimism we need people to actually
give us a roadmap for how to move
forward and when we have a path that
actually produces hope in us and maybe
just maybe we can look to nature
to give us some of that recent science
video capabilities with advanced
technology GPS tracking has all these
new technologies have allowed scientists
to study murmuration z’ in new ways and
the implications are groundbreaking as I
dove into this research and I began to
study the principles that are driving
this phenomenon I began to see that
these principles have broader
implications and applications you know
the science and nature has so many
lessons to help solve complex human
problems and this phenomenon has the
keys to unleashing collective movement
in our communities the way I like to say
it is this bird’s first taught us how to
fly and now they will teach us how to
unify we thank you as I dove deeper and
deeper and deeper into this fascinating
research on my journey of learning I
began to overlay an anthropological
perspective I began to pull in ideas
from system dynamics I began to pull in
ideas from organizational leadership and
what emerged was a tapestry of signposts
to help us move beyond our divided state
I’ve put together these ideas and our
first book that’s coming out it’s called
designed for more it’s coming out in
June of this year and I outlined seven
principles from the murmuration and this
first book is written specifically to
the Christian Church a community of
faith that has historically been divided
but was really designed to operate as
one then in my second book I’m gonna
apply the murmuration principles to a
broader audience so we can unleash
collective movement in our businesses
and in our communities so today I want
to just share two of those seven
principles so that you can walk out of
this room with something intensely
practical to do something that you can
wake up tomorrow and do to help us move
back our sile beyond our siloed and
divided state and the
principle is this within the phenomenon
the birds have an extreme focus on a
common strategy they have an extreme
focus on a common strategy originally
scientists wondered if the murmuration
was possible and why the murmuration was
occurring it could have been because the
birds were trying to generate heat and
warmth these formations generally occur
in later fall early winter and although
gathering warmth may be a beneficial
byproduct to the murmuration what the
new science shows is that the
murmuration is a direct response to a
predator that’s in the area the
peregrine falcon is one of these elite
predators it hovers high above its prey
and does blistering nose dives to pick
off an isolated bird it can get up to
200 miles an hour in its dive making it
the fastest mammal on the planet in
those moments I mean this is an elite
predator how do you defend against an
elite predator you unite and rather than
competing against one another the
starlings have realized that they need
to work together a common strategy to
defend against the real enemy in our
communities we have so often made our
neighbor or the other the enemy and
instead of working together with common
strategies for our cities we fight one
another it is time to redefine who the
right enemies are it’s time to generate
collective ideas for how to solve the
ails in our communities put down the
hateful judgmental and Prejudice ideas
that come from our in-group mentalities
from one another common strategy is
critical collective movement but common
strategy is not quite enough it needs to
work in tandem with the second principle
that I want to share with you today and
that is this the starlings know and
respond to their seven influential
neighbors first scientists wondered how
the speed and efficiency is possible
in the murmuration birds have
unbelievable reaction times in these
formations and they postulate it could
it be that the birds are responding to
others within a certain distance could
it be that they have some invisible
brain train transference going on the
new research is showing that the
starlings are responding to their seven
closest neighbors at any given time
there are seven neighbors regardless of
how tight it is regardless how it
expands and this produces efficiency
watch as relationships produce
efficiency let me put this in context
for you your average reaction time for
humans is about a hundred and ninety
eight milliseconds the average bird
reaction time is thirty eight
milliseconds pretty fast in the
murmuration the starlings reaction time
gets as low as 15 milliseconds this is
possible because they are completely
aware of their neighbors at any given
time and responding appropriately when
we begin to add common strategy and the
knowledge and response to our seven
influential neighbors something happens
and this too should give us great hope
because what we see in this phenomenon
is this concept complex order does not
require complex behavior let me say it
again complex order does not require
complex behavior when it comes to this
concept and idea of unity and moving
past our dividing walls we lose a lot of
hope really fast and we just sort of
throw our hands up in the air and we say
let’s not even try it
I’ll just stain my comfortable silo this
is much better over here and it seems so
hard and unreachable that we just quit
for the birds it’s not some crazy
complex thing that creates this unity
they stay true to their principles day
in and day out whether it’s snowing or
whether there’s a headwind whether it
freezing whatever the circumstance is
around it their behavior which isn’t
that complex produces complex order who
are the seven people for you do you have
seven people who are influencing you if
you’re ready to take on this challenge
and be part of the solution I challenge
you to find seven people who are going
to impact you and challenge you to view
the world differently the key is you’ve
got to find people that are diverse than
you find somebody from a different
generation find someone from a different
gender find somebody from a different
cultural background and then take the
posture of a learner because the whole
point of it is to learn and I allow them
to influence you that is something
intensely practical each of us can begin
to do if I could boil down these two
principles into just one key idea for
the two engines to collective movement
our relationships and strategy
relationships and strategy working in
tandem produces a near nuclear energy
for us to move into the state of
completion that we were designed for but
all of this comes with a warning a very
serious warning because if we unite and
we generate collective movement around
the wrong motive or around a wrong cause
the outcomes can be terrible history has
shown us that the unity of the selfish
and powerful produces oppression history
has also shown us that the unity of the
oppressed brings revolution but watch
this this last one this is the sweet
spot for change the unity of the humble
brings transformation the unity of the
selfish and powerful has oppressed
entire people groups in history has
shown us that and then when those people
are oppressed they unite and they rise
up they bring revolution
but revolutions have always been
associated with war and bloodshed and
sometimes they overthrow one regime just
to uh sure and another one but the
stories of history that have brought
lasting change to our communities are
those that have been led by humble
leaders who bring about transformation
where the old is gone and something new
comes to life these are the stories of
Nelson Mandela who helped overthrow
apartheid in South Africa these are the
stories of William Wilberforce
who helped overthrow slavery in England
or consider mother Teresa
the humble leader that showed us how to
love the oppressed and the outcast of
the world the humble servant leader is
the one that transforms their
communities and we need a unity of
people like that to change our
communities so there’s a lot of problems
in our world and I would propose to you
that unity within diversity is the
highest leverage thing that we can do to
solve our community ails it’s easy to
divide it comes natural but show me a
leader who can bring together people
that are diverse that is powerful what
if we began to murmur eight what if we
began to move in efficiency and power
finesse and beauty what if we could
respond to our neighbors and design
collective strategies for our world
what if we could redefine who the enemy
is and humbly serve our neighbor you can
be part of that movement in fact you’re
an irreplaceable part of the system you
have experienced talent giftings
perspective we need your story when we
begin to operate in our greater design
the outcomes could be limitless and we
could charter new waters to
imagine if we sparked a murmuration of
our own thank you so much [Applause]
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