Learning from the ants
At my grandparent’s place without internet, power or access to books; I was forced to watch how ants were doing their business. Ants are strong and hard working creatures. Just about a dozen ants are able to carry a cockroach against gravity.
The ants were going in a line in bi-directional traffic. One way was to their colony and the other way was to a food source. It was odd that they were colliding with each other head on with oncoming ants often before moving ahead. I had read before that ants have generally poor eye sight and rely on smell for navigation. To experiment with that took a perfume and sprayed near the path.
The orderly traffic went into a chaos. A lot of ants went in different directions. It was beautiful to watch them find and establish a new path away from the perfume. There was some order getting in when things were chaotic, when a few ants found how to reach back to their traffic line, they communicated with others (probably a scent trail) and a new path was established. I don’t think we are capable of getting out of a chaotic situation so fast.
Next I noticed lone ants acting stray. When their entire colony was working hard, these ants were roaming around randomly. Why? Weren’t these looking for food? I picked up a candy and dropped right next to it. It stopped to explore the candy for a while and immediately it turned around and took a high speed sprint back to the line of ants. When it reached there, a few ants gathered around this one and within a few seconds they all moved to the candy. Have not we been asked not to spend time on things which are not obviously productive?
These ants gathered around the candy, probably they were trying to lift it back to their colony as I had seen them carrying small candy pieces in groups of around 10. After a bit of roaming around they started to form a line from the candy to merge with their mainline and after a few hours it was getting visible how the ants were slowly breaking down the candy and taking it back to their colony. Won’t we need a series of approvals before we sign up for new tasks even if it was very much inline with the needs?
The group of ants had no obvious leader, but still quickly resolved from a chaotic situation. The colony had ants scouting for new sources while others were working hard, which made them so successful in finding food. The speed at which they collaborate and quickly find a way to get the best out of every new situation is something we should learn.
If blind and unintelligent species like ants can see order in chaos why not we do it. Ants act like a super organism, they act for the greater good of their society, in the due course they look like highly functional resilient creatures; humans are inherently selfish and territorial, so we generally spend all our intelligence in taking good care of ourselves. We get into damage control when there is chaos and fight not to end up last. There are companies which encourage collaboration and organizational learning instead of command and control. These companies succeed overall in the long term and they are the ones which are resilient, the other companies depend a lot on their leader, money, market position and a lot and lot of rules.
