Group behaviour fascinates me. My Grade 8 class went on a school ski trip on North Vancouver's Grouse Mountain back in 1975. In the group of a dozen or so zit-faced suburban Pong-masters that I was a part of, only a couple were competent skiers. The rest of us took the beginner's lesson, starting out on the bunny hill.
Clad in jeans and a hand-me-down coat, I was among those who followed the guy with real ski pants when he suggested that we try a run down a more aggressive hill nearby. None of us were man enough to admit that we weren't man enough for the task, so we all followed him on to the steeper hill.
Can you sense where this is going?
The intermediate hill was significantly more sloped, and the length was about thrice that of the hill we left behind. As we stood nervously at the crest, I thought maybe we should reconsider but struggled for the courage to speak up, when Mr. Ski Pants shouted "Geronimo!" and headed straight down the incline. We all followed suit, like a bunch of soon-to-be head-smashed-in-buffalos. Our descent was accelerated by the fact that none of us knew how to turn or stop.
About half way down the hill, the Geronimo guy was screaming like a little girl, which came as a great relief to the rest of us, who all joined in with our own boy-man-girl cries. None of us had the presence of mind to fall down before we were going too fast to achieve horizontal status with relative grace.
At the bottom of the slope was a well-developed set of moguls, which would have been a challenge even for more advanced skiers to navigate at the speeds we were travelling. As we approached them, I was terrified with the legitimate fear of death. One dorky 13 year-old after another hit those three-foot speed-bumps at full-pace, screaming, flying, and crashing, until we were reduced to a sad heap of Sport Goofy at bottom. There were skis, poles, and toques everywhere. We were shaken, but alive.
It was quiet at the bottom, as we all checked our limbs and gathered our gear together. Then Geronimo declared: "That was excellent!" and we all lied in agreement, then repeated the run several times for the rest of the
afternoon.
I'm sure there's a fisheries biologist out there who can tell us about what gets communicated among schools of fish when they change direction, seemingly in unison. Is there a lead fish, or does the group respond to some sort of external stimulus simultaneously?
I don't know, but humans also display a fishy inclination to stay close to the supposed safety of the group. Perhaps there is some deeply-ingrained survival mechanism, a sort of herd mentality, which makes us feel uncomfortable outside the shelter of a group.
This can, of course, be turned on its head. If the crowd is inclined in the wrong direction, it can lead to the near destruction of the herd. Case in point: U.S. real estate.
A few brilliant entrepreneurs have a special knack for exiting the herd at just the right time. I admire this talent greatly. One such man is a real estate developer I know. A few years ago he sold a bunch of his property in California after he saw a consortium of teachers start up a new development next to one of his. He took that as his signal to sell, which he did, with impeccable timing.
Said another way, we should: "Attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful." Warren Buffet.
Mark Ryan is an advisor with RBC Wealth Management, Dominion Securities (member CIPF) and can be reached at [email protected].
