The Octopus Method: When You're the Bottleneck

Ever felt like you’re the bottleneck, the one brain everything has to run through until the whole thing grinds to a halt?

In the middle of a chaotic innovation project in India, Pia found herself locked in a basement toilet with no reception, cut off from the team, the decisions, and the work itself.

And just like that, everything stalled.

This episode sits inside that moment, when one point of control becomes the point of failure, and the realisation that holding it all together might be the problem.

Using biomimicry, Pia explores how octopuses distribute intelligence across their bodies. Two thirds of their neurons sit in their arms, allowing them to sense, decide, and act without everything flowing through a single brain.

That strategy inspired the Octopus Method, a biomimicry approach Pia developed and uses in her own work to redesign how teams sense, decide, and adapt in real time.

Not to hand over control. Not to disappear from the system.

But to rethink where intelligence actually needs to sit.

If this episode makes you see teamwork a little differently, share it with someone who’s got their own set of clever arms in the mix.

Nature owns the patent. We get to copy it.

Biology: Octopuses distribute two thirds of their neurons through their arms, allowing local sensing, decision-making, and action without central control.
Principle: Distribute intelligence to where information is generated to increase responsiveness and reduce bottlenecks.
Application: The Octopus Method uses decentralised “lenses” to enable teams to sense, decide, and adapt in parallel without relying on a single coordinating brain.

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Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

So people keep asking me the same question. Okay, but how do you actually use this stuff like in real life? And that's a totally fair question. It's one thing to marvel at how clever nature is, and it is. And it's another thing entirely to actually steal those strategies and apply them to the real human world. I'm Pia and this is Feral by Design. Quick heads up, this episode's a bit more work-oriented. Still wild, just in a workplace kind of way. So here's biomimicry in action. This is one of several times biology has actually redesigned how I approach my work. This episode's about octopuses, toilets, and why sometimes the smartest thing you can do as a leader is just get the hell out of your own way. A few years ago I was running a project in a big Indian city, trying to understand the morning commute chaos. And chaos is a good word for what that was. I had client teams that I'd already trained in human-centred design methodology and stuff, so they were familiar with what we were trying to achieve. They were out experiencing this early morning, I'd say rush hour, but rush is really not the word, experiencing this first hand. We had some who were in non-air con buses for two-hour bus rides into town. We had others crammed into women's only train carriages at this peak hour, some clinging to the back of mopeds, others walking through the crowded streets to get to town. So they were mimicking the typical morning commutes. And me? I was meant to be on one of those journeys too. While also puppeteering the whole thing, right? So checking everyone got to their stops, that they were met at the end and that the interviews that they were going to were all ready and everyone was safe, all of that kind of thing. So I was kind of like a air traffic controller of chaos. Except where was I? This is a true story. I was locked in the basement bathroom of a yet to open shopping centre, because it was early, right? There was no mobile reception. There was no handle on the inside of the bathroom door. So I just had to sit there and wait for the security guard to come on duty and open up the door to the facilities from the outside. This went for about forty-five minutes. My God, she got the fright off her life when she opened up that door. Anyway, while I was sitting waiting quietly in a poorly ventilated basement bathroom, the entire project was grinding to a stall. Every bus team, every train team, every moped team had stalled because the brain, that's me, was stuck in a toilet. It is so clear that the whole project bottlenecked through me. And that was often the case. So here's the thing I have to admit, part of me liked being that air traffic controller. There's a rush to holding it all together while the karma gods and the universe throw curveballs at you. But that same instinct to tighten my grip was exactly what was creating that bottleneck in the first place. I was trying to be conductor and composer at the same time, orchestrating logistics and also doing deep immersion activities myself, that's impossible. So I asked myself, if this is the flaw in how I work, what does nature do when it faces the same problem? And it led me to a very inspiring organism, the octopus. The octopus doesn't force everything through one brain. Two-thirds of its neurons aren't in its head at all, actually, they're in its arms. Each arm has its own cluster of nerve cells, like a mini brain. Gross! I think magnificent. So each mini brain can sense and decide and act independently. So one arm over here can be prying open a clam, and yes, I'm acting this out. Another is testing a crevice, another is moving the whole animal forward. It's all without asking permission from head office. Research suggests, and more work still needs to be done on this, that the arms can even pass information directly to each other through a kind of neural ring. So bypassing the central brain entirely. So the octopus can run multiple streams of activity in parallel, adapting fluidly to its chaotic environment. Sometimes synchronized, sometimes asynchronized. And that was the clue for me. The solution to the bottleneck isn't a bigger brain. It's distributed intelligence. So I started experimenting with what I now call my octopus method. I like to pause there for dramatic effect. Now this isn't delegation dressed up in new clothes. This is different. Delegation still has one brain in charge, handing tasks down the chain. And I still use that methodology in a lot of project emotions for sure. But when the conditions are right, this octopus method shifts the entire structure. Just to clarify, I developed this after that India project. It came from reflecting on that experience and then testing it on other projects since. But knowing what I know now, having used this method elsewhere, I can so clearly see how I would have run that project differently. If I could turn back time. Anyway, if I could turn back time, this is how I would have done it. Instead of me assigning specific tasks, Team A, you're on Bus Route 47, and you need to interview five commuters within the next hour and a half, etc. Instead of doing that, I give teams specialized lenses. So maybe one lens is physical toll, tracking where the body pays the price for this commute. Or time poverty, where does the time leak or get stolen in the commute? Or social infrastructure, who helps whom and where. That kind of thing. So they are potential lenses for this specific project. Let me make this visual. Say a team has the physical toll lens. This immediately changes the way my team would be experiencing that commute. So they start on the non-aircon buses, bless, tracking heat stress during the ride. But 20 minutes in, plot twist, they realise the real damage isn't actually done in the bus ride, it's the wait before the bus. 20 minutes standing at a bus stop in 38-degree heat, with no shade, lots of people, and dust. People are arriving at work already cooked before their day even starts. So the team pivots. They stop riding the actual routes and they start camping out at bus stops instead. Mapping which ones have shelter, tracking wait times, observing coping strategies, talking to people there before and after their wait. They don't ask permission from head office or me locked in my bathroom. Their lens tells them what to look for: physical toll. How they look is entirely up to them. And crucially, they can pass insights directly to other teams using the neural ring strategy from octopuses. So that team might reach out directly with the time poverty team and say, hey, we're seeing pre-commute heat exhaustion here. That might connect to some of your time poverty findings without it flowing through me first. Instead of me designing every team's approach, I design their specialized lens. Then each team has autonomy to pivot their method based on what their lens actually reveals as they go. Trusting teams to follow their noses and letting the lens that they're using drive that active choice. That's the octopus intelligence. Multiple parts sensing in parallel, adaptive and in real time, talking to each other, not waiting for head office, who's locked away, to decide the next move. As a quick aside, if you work in adaptive teams, this probably feels familiar. One of the differences there's no set rhythm or sprint clock. The lens itself drives the adaptation, not a calendar. Anyway, as we were. When conditions are right, we've got experienced teams or people who can actually identify the difference between signal and noise. That's when you want the octopus method. Because then you're not going down rabbit holes, you're actually following your nose and you're unearthing new insight. I've used this and we've unearthed chewy insights we might have missed otherwise. The kind that only surface when people can follow what their lens reveals in real time, rather than having to stick to a predetermined plan. I have worked in this space for such a long time, and I can't tell you how many times I myself, let alone the teams that I'm doing my work with, have had to stop and move on to the next activity, right in the center of something that was getting really chewy and interesting. Now I don't use the octopus method in every situation, because some projects, it's too high stakes to be honest, and teams aren't experienced enough yet. So I play a more central role in that immersion phase, which I'm really happy to do. And that's true of nature too, though. The octopus doesn't use distributed intelligence in every situation either. When they're facing a predator, for instance, the central brain takes over. In a crisis, one clear signal beats eight competing ones, right? Context always matters. But when it works, that bottleneck dissolves. It really does. It becomes intelligence that is genuinely distributed. That said, learning to let go and trust the process, even though I've designed that part myself, is still a work in progress for me, to be totally honest. However, next time I get stuck in a less than pleasant, badly ventilated space with a mop and a bloody metal bucket that I viscerally remember, at least the project will keep running without me. There's always upside. For those listening who are working with teams, whether that's innovation projects, creative collabs, or even complex family logistics, the principle still holds that once the overarching brain has set the mission, sometimes the smartest way to lead is to actually let the armed self-navigate. This is what biomimics call being locally attuned and responsive, each part sensing what's happening right around it and adjusting in real time. It's also what gives the system resilience because it can keep functioning even when the central brain is locked in a bathroom underground. The octopus has taught me to recognize when I'm creating a bottleneck by insisting on everything flowing through me. And I think that's useful, whether you're running projects or anything really. And this octopus method, it's biomimicry. It's not just inspired by nature, but directly copying the strategy that's been pressure tested for hundreds of millions of years. Fun fact octopuses taste with their arms. And that is feral by design. Today's episode was brought to you by the octopus. Thanks, sucker! Nature owns the patent, we get to copy it.