The origin of the "catfish effect" is to talk about the survival of fish. Later, this survival method was applied to management. Because Norwegians like to eat sardines, especially live fish, the prices of live sardines and dead sardines are far from each other. After the Norwegians catch sardines at sea, these sardines are easy to die during transportation, mainly because sardines are lazy, do not like sports and have a long way to return. So most of the sardines caught often die as soon as they return to the dock. In order to get these sardines to Hong Kong alive and sell them at a good price, one of the fishermen did it. His sardines were always alive every time they were sold, so he earned more money than others.

The fisherman kept the secret of the success of sardines' survival until his death. Curious people opened his fish tank to find out, and found that it was not much different from other ordinary fishermen. The only difference was that the fisherman had a catfish in his fish tank.

Because the catfish used fish as its main food, its temperament was different from that of sardines. Catfish was active and fierce. After it was put into the fish tank, it would swim around because of the unfamiliar environment. When sardines found this alien molecule, they accelerated their swimming. Catfish was chasing and sardines were at large, so sardines returned to the port alive.

This is the famous "catfish effect". Sociology, management and psychology use this effect to compete with the group through individual's "midway intervention", which is in line with the operation mechanism of talent management.

Source: Teaching Expo, 30 issues in 2020