What Your Business Can Learn from the Ants and the Bees

Foraging and Making Errors to Succeed

Scout or forager bees search out new food sources randomly and report
their findings through a waggle dance to others who will follow their
lead. Surprisingly the followers are bad at following the waggle dance
instructions and get lost and in the process sometimes find some other
new food sources.

So you need to train your staff to recognise they have made mistakes and
look out for the new opportunities that can arise out of mistakes. They
also need to signal to the colleagues or team-mates the mistakes they
have made.

Ants lose a pheromone trail with regular error rate, but they then
switch to random search mode, and so again find new food sources. An
error at the individual level can translate into group adaptive
behaviour.

By foraging and making errors bees and ants succeed in adapting to their
changing environment. The only thing that is certain in business is
change.

So who are the pathfinders or foragers in your business?

Thomas Watson Jr., of IBM, who continued his father's work in creating
this highly successful computer and software company (IBM provided over
60% of the World's Computers in the 60's to 80's), promoted only those
razor-sharp, irritating, abrasive, unpleasant people who see and tell
you about things as they really are. They were his foragers with
powerful pheromones.

So who gets out there in your business and finds the hot areas and
signals back to base, so as to divert resources to this new and exciting
find.

Astonishing feats of teamwork emerge from a large number of unsupervised
individuals following simple rules - e.g. "if you find some good food
source waggle your tail".

To usefully manage all this information feedback, you need to find a
minimum or critical amount or density of interactions (patterns) on a
topic to stimulate or trigger an action or decision. This is sometimes
called swarm intelligence.

So give your staff simple instructions to start foraging and to report
back any problems, successes, and opportunities to you. It's then your
job to synthesis and analyse these bits of information into patterns
that enables you to take adaptive action with confidence. I have found
in my company that when I receive three to five messages or bits of
complementary intelligence on a topical area that is when and only when
I take action.

Adopt these simple principles of nature and you'll make better
decisions. As a result you'll create a great world beating business that
constantly adapts to its environment.

Syd Stewart is the author of "Smiling Owner How to Build a Great Small
Business An Evolutionary Business E-Handbook". He has been an owner and
manager for over 30 years. He Knows What Works and What Doesn't. Visit
his site to find out how you can 'Build a Great Small Business' at
http://www.smilingowner.com