ANTS CAN TEACH US A LOT ABOUT LEADING & MANAGING Part One

by rictownsend

Jobs Vacancy, Job vacancies, Employment Jobs

Who cares what ants do… I’m busy with crocodiles… (‘When you’re up to your backside in crocodiles its hard to focus on the fact that your original mission was to drain the swamp’)

So what can we learn from ants?

Ants have been around for about 100 million years and in their terms we are beginners when it comes to process management. ‘Yeah yeah but’ you may say… they’re just stupid little crawly things acting on their instincts… true, however, what a well honed set of instincts they have, consider this…

INPUT QUALITY. Leaf Cutter ants are so ‘quality conscious’ that they back up in case of disaster by delivering the bits they bring to ‘the office/factory’ to different areas so the entire colony doesn’t collapse if some bad stock turns up. What about the quality of our supply chain, are we exposed? A major technology company not so long ago publicly announced that one of its key divisions suffered millions in lost revenue (and I guess market share) because their single chipmaker had a factory fire. Who decided to buy from a single chipmaker, let alone one with a single production facility? How diversified is our supply chain, have we looked lately?

PRODUCTION QUALITY. Ants’ competence management is so well refined that they even have different physical attributes to handle specialist tasks. Leaf Cutters come in different sizes and shapes, to suit their role. How is our competence modeling going. Do we hire for what we need and train for the shortcomings? How long has it been since our managers looked at the competence requirement for their department and presented a proposal on how to fix the gap? Does HR test applicants against the job spec before hiring or do they still send in ‘the best of a bad bunch’?

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A management lesson for us all… “NATURE DOES NOTHING USELESSLY” (Aristotle) and if we want to succeed in developing our organization (and our own management and leadership skills) neither should we.