Innovation — Leadership, Ants, Doctors and Vision
Self Organizing Teams: A model for innovation in the new normal
Working in the lawn, I accidentally disturbed an ant nest. A flurry of ants emerged scurrying about to inspect the damage. Within moments, some were moving grains of sand and others moving ant larvae. Later that day, I noticed the ant mound was repaired without any sign of prior damage. I have learned that ants are experts in self-organizing teams and collaboration. Their organization structure is a “decentralized system”. Their work activity is driven at the individual ant level without the command of a central leader.
The article, “Doctors Improvise, Share Treatments” [1], describes how doctors and medical professionals, from various hospitals across the globe, collaborated to develop alternate means of ventilating Covid-19 patients. As medical professionals devised new methods they posted their findings on social media. Innovation snowballed and collaboration occurred organically. What was special was there was no government mandate or formal leader driving the innovation and collaboration, aside from the spirit to serve humanity. This was truly a decentralized effort.
Ants are driven by nature (or genetics) and the medical professionals were driven by crisis to solve a critical problem.
What lessons can leaders take away and apply to the everyday work setting?
- Clarity of Vision. In the absence of crisis, which crystalizes priorities, leaders must clearly articulate the team’s objectives and communicate how those objectives contribute to the organization’s overall success. Vision provides the framework to establish employee priorities. Vision is the work environment equivalent for the ant’s genetic wiring.
- Learning Organization Culture. Starting at the C-Level, all leaders reward employees for seeking new knowledge, sharing knowledge, innovation, learning from past experiences and failure that accompanies experimenting with new ideas. This is a culture change that all employees must embrace. Learning becomes part of daily work habits. Knowledge hungry employees make for a nimble organization.
- Incorporate Agile Methods. Agile methodologies are no stranger to Information Technology teams. Consider adopting Scrum techniques in admin and operating departments. The Scrum method encourages self-organization, rapid development and places a high emphasis on delivering business value. Bonus — ask IT project managers to lead the Agile training for real cross pollination of business knowledge.
- Leadership Perspective. Managers shift from top down, control freaks, who dole out assignments to leaders who remove roadblocks, maintain a communication rhythm, set boundaries and ensure the organization and team vision is not lost.
Work life in the new normal may require leadership and employees to adopt a more decentralized system. This could be absolutely true for service firms. Remote work and social distancing emphasizes knowing your priorities, working autonomously with frequent deliverable checkpoints. Learning shifts from formal courseware to internal knowledge transfer. Organizations with remote employees will thrive in a learning culture. The points taken together position an organization to adapt and prosper in the midst of uncertainty.
We could be experiencing Darwinism in the economic sense?
References
[1] O’Brien, R. (Friday, April 10, 2020) “Doctors Improvise, Share Treatments.” Wall Street Journal
