Flight

From the earliest of times, man has been fascinated by birds. With a dream of soaring in the blue skies, time and again he has tried to imitate their flight with wings fashioned out of feathers, which he has attached to his hands and tried to flap.

The results have been, well let's say, not quite up to his expectations. And always without fail, many a budding aviator's dreams have come crashing to the ground, both metaphorically as well as literally.

The reason is not difficult to understand. What we see is a bird flapping its wings. What actually makes the bird fly is a host of aerodynamic features, including the build of its muscles and its hollow bones, features that are not readily observable.

Which brings us back to the iceberg principle.

An organisation which tries to take on a competitor based on an observation of its obvious behaviour is quite likely to fail, because it misses out on the balance two-thirds of the competitor's strengths, since they are neither so obvious, nor so readily visible.