Go to the ants, sluggard!

When King Solomon urged his hearers to "go to the ant, thou sluggard; Consider her ways, and be wise" (Prov. 6:6), he couldn't have foreseen that modern managers would eagerly take his advice. Maybe that ancient wise man was truly wise in this way, too - that by studying the ants, we not only learn about the nature of industriousness, but that we might learn something more about planning, organising, communicating, working together as a team, disclipline and many other aspects of strategic management process that can tell us not only about ants but arguably about the most interesting species in nature - Homo Sapiens, sitting in corporate glasshouses and framing strategies, on how to effectively implement them.

The other day, we discuused in the "Strategic Management" class about the various learnings related to management from observing ants!

The out come of the discussion was amazing! Some of the interesting observations made by my guys were:

1. Ants Never quit !!

If ants are headed somewhere and you try to stop them, they'll look for another way. They'll climb over, they'll climb below, they'll climb around.They keep looking for alternate ways, if they are faced with obstacles.

2. Ants are good planners!

They are not so naive to think that summer will last forever. They think about winter and store thduring the summer.

3. Ants look for opportunities!

During winter, they don't continue to stay in the ant hill. They are out, in the very first warm day. If it turns cold again, they'll dive back down, but then they come out the nextwarm day.

4. They are great problem solvers!

Ants have an amazing ability to communicate with each other and work together to accomplish complex tasks. They are brilliant builders, and are excellent at solving problems by using their strengths. Very often we find them carrying heavier staff than their own weight and see them cross over any barriers or problems coming in their way.

5. Espirit de corps!

Many times we could see other ants joining the one who's finding it difficult to move something on its own. The struggling one might communicate to others to help him out and soon we find a lot of his "friends and colleagues" joining hands, without any dirty politics or egoistic self-centerdness!

6. The art of war!

They knew many of the strategies of war, much before Sun Tzu published his works as "The Art of War", and implement them successfully. It has often been said that a single ant is fairly useless, and will die very quickly, but together, a whole colony acts like a single creature, with remarkable intelligence and understanding. The warrior ants have such enormous tools on their limbs which they use for fighting, that they can't actually feed themselves.

7. Perseverence!

They relentlessly make attempts to carry seemingnly impossible objects, until they succeed at last. We should learn this perhaps, at least, when we follow our dreams!!

8. Great communicators with a goal oriented approach!

If a big gap is created, forcing ants to try to cross it to reach food, it is fascinating to watch how they investigate the problem, how they communicate with each other to get a group together, and how they manage to bridge the gap. This could be by bringing resources to build a bridge, or even using each other to make a bridge. It has been seen in the wild that sometimes hundreds of ants bond together to create a bridge out of their own bodies in order to cross a gap or ridge, such as a stream. This is a feat rarely seen in nature, with so many separate creatures of any species, all working together to achieve a shared goal. "The collective behavior that emerges from a group of social insects, such as ants, can be called 'swarm intelligence'. Swarm intelligence consists of the self-organization of many individuals that work collectively to find the best solution for a difficult problem".

9. Discipline is a way of life!

In no anthill, you may find any waste praticles thrown or left unattended! All the inside compartments in the colony will be spic and span!

...there were, infact, more than 20 points that we discussed in the class about ants and the lessons we learn from them, but these are some of the best ones...! More lessons and contributions are welcome from all! As they say, "there's no end for learning".