I am sitting in Amsterdam Airport at 6am, or was it 5am? Well it was 10am where I was coming from, so needless to say, I was a little disorientated. Armed with a strong coffee and a muffin, I began to do some work. Something caught my attention. It sounded like a bird, could there be a bird in Schiphol airport? Did it get trapped?
Sure enough, as I squinted up, there was a Sparrow sitting high above me (I was a little concerned about my exposed coffee, keyboard, open mouth and muffin, so closed my mouth). The sparrow swooped down just as a family left a table in the restaurant, much to the delight of others sitting nearby, a welcome distraction after their overnight flights and disturbed sleep.
The LBB (Little Brown Bird) began to clean the table and surrounding floor of crumbs, to be promptly joined by another LBB. They polished off what had been left behind and returned to their nest. My pity quickly turned to admiration.
As we all know, the interior of an airport has never experienced fresh air, I marvelled at how these feathered creatures, not only survived being caught in an enclosed area, but settled, produced a family, and are now thriving in a hostile environment.
It is adaptation to perfection. It got me thinking that it is exactly what we need to do as business owners in today’s harsh reality, as economies and banking systems collapse under our noses. In times of adversity, lives diversity. Every entrepreneur and business owner needs to rethink the environment they find themselves in, and adapt, just like the hardy Sparrow.
I learned a lesson this morning, have you learned how to diversify?
