Mark Choon

Early this morning, while I was having breakfast at a coffeeshop, I noticed a flock of pigeons on the second level roof shelter of an adjacent coffeeshop. At one corner of that same roof, stood a crow.

One worker at that particular coffeeshop then called out to the pigeons, broke a couple of pieces of bread and dropped them onto the street where the pigeons can get to it. I was expecting the pigeons to just swoop down and pick at those pieces of bread on the ground, but instead, they just stared at it. They were all lined up at the edge of the roof shelter and staring down. Staring at an opportunity that’s right in front of them. Just staring. Not doing anything..

Just as the pigeons were looking, the crow stepped up onto the edge, swooped down, hopped to the pieces of bread, picked at them and swallowed a few then flew off. Only then did the pigeons got the hint, “hey its food, let’s go!” and the whole flock flew down and starting to peck at the remaining bits. And whoa.. it was chaos! Each pigeon for itself. There was much shovelling and fast pecking. Fastest beak gets the bread.

As I was watching this happen, I thought to myself this question. Am I more like the crow or am I more like the pigeons? The crow was able to spot an opportunity, take action, seize a sizable chunk for itself first then disappear. The pigeons waited, hesitated and in the end, they had to fight for the scraps that were left over.

I guess in business and entrepreneurship, it is the same. The first mover who spots the opportunity, is capable and willing to take the risk, usually comes out better than the others who just wait to follow what others are doing. So let me pose this question to you, which one are you? The crow or the pigeons?

 p.s. things here will be slow for a while as I will be making a work trip down to Australia for about a month