New Kind of Leadership in Collaborative World
By observing bugs, bees and birds, we humans can learn a lot about leadership in this new world of collaboration, according to Wired Magazine article ‘What Bugs Can Teach Bosses’. Geese and other animals that naturally form groups can teach humans a lot about team dynamics. Organizational Biomimetics is a term coined by author Ken Thompson. Check out his blog Bumble Bee, where he writes about the principles underlying nature’s management strategies.
Ants and Bees: Both ants and bees transmits messages about food and about predators. Thompson says that people, too, benefit from broadcasting more. Letting everyone access to information and letting them decide how best to act on it is actually useful. Looks like Web 2.0 technologies like Twitter etc. has some merit to them in the enterprise world. Some organizations have begun to implement Twitter like capabilities within their organizations.
Geese: When flying the birds rotate in and out of lead position. This is according to Thompson, is to conserve energy and also enable that no one bird has to memorize the entire path. Collective leadership is much the norm in animal word. As organizations gets global and business process get complex, not one individual (CEO) will be able to handle the complexities. So, collective leadership will work better. Thompson says that business with rotating leaders possess greater initiative and agility compared to one those led by one executive.
Worms: Worms have tiny brain but that good enough because each neuron have a large number of inter-connectors. This helps transmit information fast. Similarly, in a organization, best connected individual or group members can serve as a conduit and help the team avoid bottleneck at the top. These ‘hub’ people can fine tune strategy when new information become available. They can help enable ‘Knowledge Management’ within the corporation by continuously updating collective knowledge with new external and internal information.
Ants and Bees: Both ants and bees transmits messages about food and about predators. Thompson says that people, too, benefit from broadcasting more. Letting everyone access to information and letting them decide how best to act on it is actually useful. Looks like Web 2.0 technologies like Twitter etc. has some merit to them in the enterprise world. Some organizations have begun to implement Twitter like capabilities within their organizations.
Geese: When flying the birds rotate in and out of lead position. This is according to Thompson, is to conserve energy and also enable that no one bird has to memorize the entire path. Collective leadership is much the norm in animal word. As organizations gets global and business process get complex, not one individual (CEO) will be able to handle the complexities. So, collective leadership will work better. Thompson says that business with rotating leaders possess greater initiative and agility compared to one those led by one executive.
Worms: Worms have tiny brain but that good enough because each neuron have a large number of inter-connectors. This helps transmit information fast. Similarly, in a organization, best connected individual or group members can serve as a conduit and help the team avoid bottleneck at the top. These ‘hub’ people can fine tune strategy when new information become available. They can help enable ‘Knowledge Management’ within the corporation by continuously updating collective knowledge with new external and internal information.
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