Hedgehogs and Dreams

You just never know what little gems you will encounter by browsing through tech and business blogs. Today I was startled by a mention of the Hedgehog Concept. Originating in a quote by the Greek poet Archilochus, translated as, “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing,” the metaphor of fox and hedgehog and their respective talents was then adapted by Isaiah Berlin in his famous essay on Tolstoy.

Berlin’s essay has spun out some fascinating, if dense, conversations in print, but I was most interested in how Jim Collins has re-focused the hedgehog theme on greatness in business:

A Hedgehog Concept is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at. The distinction is absolutely crucial.

My dream group has been meeting weekly for 15 years now, and over time we have developed our own set of identifiers for special parts of a dream. One of our chief identifiers is the “hedgehog.” This is the little detail—literally, its first appearance was as a hedgehog in one of our dreams—that we mostly overlook. Then, almost as an afterthought, one of us will say, “what about that hedgehog in the garden?” and that minor detail ends up generating the greatest insights from the dream.

Since that time, we have trained ourselves to be alert for seemingly insignificant dream details which could end up holding the key to much deeper meanings. And now that I know the humble hedgehog also carries weight as a symbol of focus and success in business, I will be all the more sharp-eyed in my search for hedgehogs in the dreams of my corporate clients.

You really can never tell what you might find, whether you are browsing the blogs, or following little hedgehogs through the garden of your dreams.