Agile Cultures
Four keys to adaptable business teams
I graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering some years ago. My studies covered historical figures like James Watt, who helped to reshape the modern world. His story is a good introduction to this post on Agile Cultures.
Watt was slight, frequently ill, socially awkward, and prone to depression. In 1772 he inherited the debt of his partner John Roebuck after their steam engine venture collapsed. Years earlier, while repairing a model engine at the University of Glasgow, Watt had recognized a major inefficiency in the Newcomen engine design and developed the separate condenser to solve it. Watt’s great insight was the basis for his venture with Roebuck.
But as many of us painfully learn, good insight is not the same as business success. Watt’s engines were expensive and hard to build. Manufacturing lacked consistency, and investors hesitated.
Matthew Boulton saw something different. He was an accomplished manufacturer at the Soho Manufactory in Birmingham, and Boulton understood organization and scale. He met Watt at a meeting of the Lunar Society, an informal club of scientists, industrialists, and thinkers. Recognizing what the engine could become, he acquired Roebuck’s share of Watt’s patent. Where Watt saw a better machine, Boulton saw a newly powered world.
Under Boulton’s leadership, production stabilized, installations expanded, and financing improved. Steam power shifted to an industrial foundation. Mines drained faster, mills ran more reliably, and power was no longer tied exclusively to rivers or muscle. Within a generation, the improved steam engine spread across Britain and beyond, helping to drive the Industrial Revolution.
Watt’s name remains with us each time we purchase a light bulb measured in watts, a quiet reminder of his work.
Steam engines existed before Watt. Mechanical knowledge was not new. What changed was vision—the ability to imagine a transformed future and reorganize people and effort around it.
But that ability to envision future possibilities did not begin in Birmingham. It began long ago, and is part of a different story.
Deep Origins
Between roughly 90,000 and 12,000 years ago, Homo sapiens expanded from East Africa across the Middle East, into Eurasia, Australia, and eventually the Americas. This movement unfolded across glacial cycles, shifting coastlines, and many ecosystems. Groups encountered new animals and plants, extreme climates, deserts, tundras, jungles, and other hominin populations.
Homo sapiens became more diverse. We encountered and interbred with human cousins such as Neanderthals and Denisovans. We acquired new genes, and very likely acquired new cultural tools and languages from these cousin groups.
These other people - like Neanderthals and Denisovans - already possessed fire, tools, language, trade networks, with some evidence of early belief systems. These ingredients of culture were widely present. Yet it was Homo sapiens that emerged out of East Africa, displaced these other people everywhere, and migrated throughout the world.
As of 2026, landmark ancient DNA studies from David Reich and many others have revealed that human migration and genetic admixtures have been continuous, at least from 75,000 years ago.
We see clear evidence of cultural admixture as well. Hunters became fishers along coasts. Stone toolmakers adapted to bone and antler. Artisans used new pigments, ornaments, totems, and visibly expressed beliefs. Clothing was tailored for cold or hot climates. Nets, needles, lamps, and storage pits appeared. Notched bones and symbolic markings preserved memory across seasons.
There is evidence of longer-term planning—anticipating and preparing for winter, spring floods, and animal migrations. Humans adapted to new foods and preparations. They buried their dead with grave goods to prepare for the unseen afterlife.
They imagined opportunities beyond the horizon.
Biological Foundations
Why did the out-of-Africa migrations succeed? Why did homo sapiens displace all other human groups? I do not believe there is any one reason or skill, such as the use of a particular weapon, or language, or fire. I believe there is evidence of a tipping point, or accumulation of adaptations. I believe these adaptations gave us cultural agility.
Our brain systems became more developed and more coordinated to support clear episodic memory, emotional integration, and improved social cognition.
Humans demonstrated stronger recall of past experience and greater ability to project possible futures. Symbolic thought expanded. Childhood lengthened, allowing extended learning and social development. Interestingly, overall brain size declined slightly after about 35,000 years ago while neural efficiency improved. Integration mattered more than sheer volume.
Biology alone did not cause expansion, but it supported flexibility, foresight, and coordination at the level of communities.
Core Behaviors of Agile Cultures
Four behaviors are evidenced by diasporic Homo sapiens during this period of expansion from 90,000 to 12,000 years ago.
First, the roles within a group became more specialized but not fixed. Responsibility changed as conditions changed.
Second, curiosity and abstract thinking drove exploration, and improved episodic memory preserved the lessons of success and failure.
Third, planning now extended well beyond our immediate need, and now represented much longer seasonal cycles, periodic animal migrations, and advance preparation of tools and materials.
Fourth, shared ideas and visions unified group effort. Our human ancestors gathered in the firelight each evening and used language, arts, and symbols to tell stories of the past and envision a better future.
The Foundation Layers
Agile cultures did not arise in isolation. As described by the Working Origins timeline, they were built on earlier layers of emotions and drives, social learning, trust and trade, instruction and iconic language, myth and mediation. By 90,000 years ago, Homo sapiens already had these core foundations.
What emerged was a better integration of biological capacities. As mentioned, improved memory and foresight aligned with cultural practices of exploration, planning, and shared meaning. This allowed flexible and agile communities to cross ecological barriers, carrying human presence across the globe.
These same capacities later supported the domestication of plants and animals in the Neolithic period. Humans shifted from moving through landscapes to reshaping them. Over time, expanding coordination and symbolic systems laid the groundwork for settled societies and eventually civilizations. Agile cultures became the platform for everything that followed.
In the Modern Workplace
Seen in this light, Watt and Boulton were expressing ancient patterns of agile organizations. Watt explored, experimented, and refined solutions through careful planning. He understood his role. Boulton understood his own quite different role, and respected the distinction. He brought manufacturing discipline, financial structure, and networks, but most importantly he contributed a broader vision.
A baseline level of trust, language, and belief helped them share a common vision of success. This helped smooth over points of friction, guide the progress, and scale up to real growth.
Modern organizations often resemble Watt before Boulton. Skilled people, functioning systems, and genuine innovation are present. Curiosity exists. Planning occurs. Experience accumulates. What may be missing is alignment around a credible future.
Agile cultures emerge when exploration, role clarity, and planning are coordinated by a shared vision of a better way.
Takeaways
I feel a personal connection to those who read Working Origins. Some of you are preparing for a career, some are well into one, and some are struggling to find direction. Many people feel that these are uniquely turbulent times. Political division, ecological change, fake news, economic uncertainty, artificial intelligence, gene editing, remote work, and social media can make the future seem uncertain.
My advice is simple. We are built to handle change.
From 90,000 years ago, humans used cultural agility to migrate throughout our world. Today’s disruptions are not very different from those we have overcome.
As leaders, we should cultivate the four core behaviors of an agile culture within our business teams.
First, value the strength of diverse contributions by team members. These may be represented by ethnicity, culture, gender, educational background, or technical skill set. Good research shows that such diversity becomes fertile ground for new business directions and growth.
Second, recognize the power of a compelling vision. Some contributors have a unique ability to envision a better way, which rise to the level of belief. Share the vision within the group and harmonize with their feedback. Many such visions simply won’t be a good fit for the group.
Third, plan for new tools - including processes, roles, materials, or training. New business often means a new business tool culture.
Fourth, team members must act in new roles, as needed. This can represent difficult change management, and is a leadership challenge.
These group behaviors were well expressed by the agile cultures of our human ancestors migrating throughout the world. These adaptations remain with us today.
Agility is not new to us. It is one of our oldest strengths.
Please take comfort - hopefully - in the Working Origins motto: Working together well is the most human thing we ever do.
For more information on this post, see the Working Origins Library and these recommendations…
The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies by Steven L. Kuhn (2021) — for how shifting tools and techniques reflect adaptable human behavior across changing environments.
Neanderthal Man by Svante Pääbo (2014) — for insight into our interaction with Neanderthals and what genetics reveals about shared histories.
Who We Are and How We Got Here by David Reich (2018) — for a clear account of human migrations and population mixing revealed through ancient DNA.
Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas by Jennifer Raff (2022) — for the peopling of the Americas and the long arc of migration into new worlds.