Wildlife filmmaking has one sacred rule: never interfere.
But in Antarctica, a BBC crew looked at around fifty freezing penguins and decided that some rules are worth breaking.
While filming David Attenborough’s Dynasties, a group of emperor penguin mothers and chicks had been driven into a steep, icy gully by a blizzard.
They were trapped.
Every time they tried to climb out, they slid back down.
The crew watched for two days.
They were there to document nature, not change it.
But at some point, watching becomes pretty difficult when you know you can help.
So they made a decision.
They didn’t touch the penguins.
They didn’t carry them out.
They simply dug a shallow ramp into the ice, creating a possible way out.
Then they walked away.
The penguins still had to make the climb themselves.
And they did.
I think there’s a beautiful lesson in this for entrepreneurship.
Helping someone doesn’t always mean solving their problem for them.
Sometimes you simply build the ramp.
You make an introduction.
You share your knowledge.
You open a door.
You give someone an opportunity.
You spend 30 minutes helping another entrepreneur think through a problem.
You recommend someone without expecting anything in return.
They still have to climb.
They still have to do the work.
But without that little bit of help, they might never get out of the hole.
Entrepreneurship is often presented as competition.
I increasingly see it as the opposite.
The strongest businesses, networks and communities are built by people who help each other move forward.
Because none of us builds anything completely alone.
Sometimes you are the penguin climbing.
And sometimes you are the person holding the shovel.
Be both.
And when helping someone costs you almost nothing, but could mean everything to them…
Pick up the shovel. ❤️
