Ep04 - The Octopus Method: What Octopuses Know About Sharing the Load
Description
Ever felt like you’re the bottleneck — the one brain trying to juggle every moving piece until the whole thing collapses?
In this episode, Pia shares a true story of running a chaotic innovation project in India… while accidentally locked in a toilet with no reception. That moment of enforced stillness led her to one of nature’s best system designers: the octopus.
Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons live in its arms, allowing it to sense, decide, and adapt without waiting for head office — a strategy that inspired The Octopus Method, a biomimicry-based approach to distributed leadership and team collaboration.
Discover how distributed intelligence can reduce bottlenecks, unlock team autonomy, and turn chaos into adaptive flow — from high-pressure projects to everyday life.
If this episode made you see teamwork a little differently, share it with someone who’s got their own set of clever arms in the mix.
🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.





