Managing Leadership^®

That’s what an animal behaviorist calls ants: inept individuals who, somehow, are able collectively to create striking organizations which can both adapt efficiently to their own evolving needs and cycling changes in the environment, and respond effectively to most emergencies arising from natural catastrophes or marauding neighbors. Inept individuals, no one of whom has any clue as to how they all do it, but who manage to do it anyway.

As for us, we have managed to learn a little about how ant colonies seem to work. For the most part, the matter appears to revolve around environmental events which mechanically provoke changes in chemical signals emitted by the individuals to whom they happen, which propagate through the colony mechanically provoking further changes in more individuals, the net effect of which has evolved to be collectively adaptive.

These sorts of discoveries – about colonies of ants, schools of fish, flocks of birds, and the like – have been attracting a lot of attention among organizational designers for some time, now. Is it possible to create a collectively functional consciousness that is sophisticated, flexible and productive and that, all the while, arises and operates independently of the awareness or independent guidance of any of its members? Would such an entity render its component individuals inept, or would its appearance depend upon their being so at the outset?

What are the organizational implications of this? Are there any, really? And if you believe that there are, what does your thinking regarding what they might be say about your view of the role or capabilities of individual employees?

How does this compare to your opinion of managers – or even leaders? Or, are we all destined to heedlessly morph in and out of each of these roles according to the deceptively simple algorithms concocted by the organizational designers behind the curtains?

Indeed, how much of what we do – or attempt to do in our organizations, today – really differ in intent from this? After all, as we know, Peter Drucker stated this as very much one of the central problems of management in the modern world of ubiquitous organizations: the creation of systems that mitigate the consequences of their inept members.

Which systems in your organizations make what judgments about the capacity of which of your fellow employees?

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Today’s tip: Speaking of algorithms rendering us inept, please see this piece about the next frontier for hackers: our brains.

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