Tortoise rescuer John Formby holds Freeway the tortoise Saturday, September 19 in Worthing, England. (photo by Billy Elliott)

From colleague and occasional Tenacious Blog contributor Heather Stagl comes a link today to a story out of London, where a motorist rescued a Hermann’s tortoise while it was crossing five lanes of the M25, the loop road around London.

Although it is likely that “Freeway” the tortoise, as he is now known, is someone’s pet, (since he has an embedded microchip), it is not yet known where he came from (since the chip is blank). Motorist John Formby spotted what he originally thought was a rock on the road, but when he saw it was moving, pulled off to effect the heroic rescue. Despite the fact that cars had been passing right over it, Freeway was unfazed. According to Formby, “it seemed very determined just to get where it was going.”Freeway is now living comfortably at an animal rescue center in Worthing, along England’s south coast, while staff try to find his owner.

Branding as the Tenacious Tortoise seems to be working. According to Heather, “I see tortoise stories everywhere now.”

Do you see tortoise stories everywhere? Please send links to info@tenacioustortoise.com.

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Loggerhead turtle, about one meter long

I don’t remember exactly when, how, or even why I first became enamored with turtles and tortoises. It’s probably been at least 25 years since I bought my first carved wooden turtle, and my collection of small handmade keepsake turtles grows by one or two every time my wife and I travel together. I’ve probably got over 50 of them now. But it’s less than an obsession for me, and I don’t have any live turtles as pets.

A video on Facebook caught my eye a couple of weeks ago. Shot at night in infrared light on Big Pine Key near our second home in Key West, Florida, it shows a “boil” – the nearly all-at-once hatching of baby loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) and their immediate and frantic scramble to the sea. The first few minutes after hatching are especially perilous for the little guys (who would easily fit in the palm of your hand) – they rely on star- and moon-light glinting off the ocean’s edge to find their way to the water before seabirds and other predators pick off these tasty morsels. Human development has threatened the loggerhead in multiple ways, including the presence of artificial light at nesting areas causing the hatchlings to lose their way to the ocean, along with entanglement in fishing lines and nets.

Loggerhead Sea Turtles were once intensively hunted for their meat and eggs, along with their fat which was used in cosmetics and medication. As a result, both its subspecies are now internationally protected. Local turtle protection organizations have sprung up near nesting areas around the world to locate and protect nests, ensure darkness and otherwise guide hatchlings to the sea, rescue wayward hatchlings, and monitor the survival of the species.

rescue in progress

Although they spend nearly their entire lives in the water, adult (and they don’t reach sexual maturity until around 35 years of age) loggerheads return to the beach of their own birth to lay their eggs below the sandy surface and above the tide line. The mother abandons the eggs and likely never sees or recognizes any of her offspring. But despite natural and human-caused threats, loggerheads have (at least until now) been very successful as a species; individuals loggerheads often live well past 100 years, and fossil evidence suggests that they’ve been around for about 200 million years. Not too bad for the little guys.

Human organizations behave like living things in some specific ways, and their drive for self-preservation is certainly among them. Individual organizations may outlive their human founders, but the long-lived human organization is the exception, not the rule. And I believe that the number one cause of organizational demise is a failure to understand and adapt to changing environmental conditions. The ecology of human organizations is as tough and unforgiving as the loggerhead’s post-natal scramble to the sea.

I continue to need to explain to friends and colleagues why I named my firm ‘Tenacious Tortoise.’ ‘Why would you want to chose an icon of slowness to represent your firm?’ they ask. But impatience and lack of determination seem to me to be the hallmark of organizations destined for an early demise. I chose Tenacious Tortoise easily and quickly when the time for naming came. I like the alliteration, and hope that it is easy to remember. But it is the tenacity of tortoises and turtles that is at the core of the idea of our firm – it is their single-minded determination to survive and prosper that we aim to capture, enable, and enhance in every client organization with whom we work.

Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to share the pictures and video.

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Several news reports yesterday described flight delays at New York’s Kennedy Airport when dozens of diamondback terrapins crawled out onto a runway from nearby Jamaica Bay. Airport officials said that the turtles were seeking a place to breed.

Diamondback Terrapin (image from Western Connecticut State University)

“Everybody had a good attitude considering it was turtles going off to hatch more turtles,” said Port Authority spokesman John Kelly. The animals were piled onto the back of a Port Authority pickup truck and were moved “back into Jamaica Bay.” 

Since I am humor impaired, please submit your own punchlines below.

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Strategic management is all about measuring drivers to anticipate future outcomes. In other words, predictions. For an amusing take on predictions, turn on the sound on your computer, and click here. Have a great weekend.

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