How cliques evolve without even really trying...

Sharks, Jets, Montagues, Capulets, Man Utd, Roma - the stage is always set for a showdown...In A West Side Story, Tony from the Jets falls in love with Maria the sister of the leader in the Sharks. Romeo - a Montague is in love with Juliet -a Capulet. When cliques, gangs, families, even football teams and fans meet it's never pretty and rarely ends happily - this much we know.

But how do cliques evolve and who starts it and where does it all end? Research into segregation, micromotives & macrobehaviour from Nobel Prize winner Thomas Schelling gives valuable insights into how cliques are not necessarily planned or designed but just sort of....happen.

In love feuds it's heartbreaking but in business an us/them mentality can have dire consequences for performance.

Schelling noticed that every town has a China town... a Hispanic district, an Indian area, an Italian area etc No one planned these, no one stood at the gates of the city as you arrived and allocated you a home....

When interviewed, city inhabitants were found to be not racist but remarkably tolerant. It's just they had a small preference (micromotive) to be with people similar to them. Who wouldn't? You can speak the same language, share the same culture, food and so on.

When small things lead to big things...they can often look planned but current understanding of emergence shows that with just a small preference (51%) to be with similar people ,a city can end up with very distinct ethnic areas (macrobehavior). Cliques emerge. They just happen. In fact for cliques to occur all you need to do is....nothing.

Building Bridges requires effort. If cliques are a natural human tendency then to achieve the opposite (diversity) with all the benefits that brings, we need to actively manage it. Network analysis (MindNet) can help to identify cliques and clusters as they emerge and create bridges between them to improve performance.

There are so many constraints in business to defeat bridge building, not least geography, history and politics - but evidence suggests that collaboration is not only good for the soul by increasing tolerance and understanding but improves performance, productivity and innovation. Structural holes exist all the time between silos in business - these gaps between people, departments and divisions if closed would immediately add value. The trick is in identifying them...

Finally - surely in a match both football teams play not against each other but together - for the benefit of football fans and entertainment as a whole. No one wants a 0-0 score with violence on and off the pitch...It's all a question of perspective and that all important paradigm shift.

As Wayne from 'Waynes World' said on viewing some football graffiti " Man United - great philosophy dude"..or put otherwise in the immortal words of the The Farm..."All togetheerr now..toogeeetherr" . Repeat.