7 Leadership Lessons We Can All Take From Termites

November 29th, 2015

Awake Goy

In East African savannas, with harsh daily and seasonal temperature differences, termites construct extraordinarily sophisticated mounds. Each mound maintains a constant temperature of 86°F, which grows the fungus the termites eat, and features ventilation systems to expel waste gasses of carbon dioxide and methane and bring in fresh oxygen. They draw water from 200-feet underground sources to keep the queen’s chamber at almost 100% humidity, optimal for egg laying. Termite society contains highly specialized roles, such as scouts, soldiers, workers, and reproducers—but no leaders. How do they achieve such ingenious feats with miniscule brains and no leaders?

Examining this question sheds light on how to achieve organizational synergy and health. The answer lies in the holistic power of the self-organizing individual termites, who adapt to the environment and each other. Each role is highly differentiated in a specialized division of labor, yet perfectly in harmony with the overall group goal. They build mounds a million times bigger than each termite. The result is a marvelous vibrant colony, better than any one of them could produce alone.

What can termites teach us about being better leaders? Here are seven lessons:

1. Provide A Shared Goal & Contextual Information

Every termite innately knows the colony’s goals: protect the members and make more copies of themselves. Similarly, leaders need to provide contextual information so the agents in the organization know how to interpret mountains of incoming signals from the environment and help the organization make ideal decisions.

For example, a CEO of a home security company could present a new goal—target the home automation market—and give compelling reasons for it: to present complementary products to decision makers at the same time, reducing customer acquisition costs; and because customers’ need for simplifying life mandates the company to integrate home security system with home automation. Then, when sales reps are on the ground with customers, noticing the contract documents are lengthy and confusing and require multiple approval tracks that take several days, they can feed the information back to the corporate office to change the process. This is possible only because the reps have an understanding that simplicity is an important customer need.

2. Let Them Self-Organize

Termites self-heal when there is a breach in the system. If a group of them gets separated, they produce supplementary reproductives to start a new colony. They know when to swarm to separate from the main colony to start their own. When a certain class of termite declines in number, they change the food given to nymphs to produce more of the dwindling class. They do all of these without being directed. There are no slacker termites.

While organizational goals provide direction, agents decide independently how to get there. No longer can a star leader with super-human intelligence control and predict every outcome and respond to many unpredictable challenges from the environment; the business environment has simply become too complex. Leaders must trust their team members to self-organize and self-direct. Organizational structure should be flat, decentralizing power to the lowest levels of decision making: the front lines. At Google, leaders are encouraged to give team members power to the point where they are getting slightly uncomfortable[1]. When we let go of our need to control, and trust that agents will give their best, we unleash our team members’ innate drive for creativity, innovation, self-determinism, and pursuit of excellence.

Capital One, a financial services company, gave employees the choice to work when and where they are most effective. Five work styles (teleworker, mobile worker, resident, anchor, executive) emerged, varying in terms of space (large dedicated, small dedicated, shared mid-sized, home) and customized technology solution (phone, cell, internet, etc.). This initiative resulted in a 20% increase in productivity and a 41% increase in overall workplace satisfaction.

3. Provide Simple Rules

Termites communicate under simple rules, such as “shorter the route to food, thicker the pheromones trail,” and “when you see danger, alert others by banging your head.” These simple rules provide a loose structure to meet common goals.

Similarly, simple rules forming a loose structure to follow a strategy enable an organization to act quickly to capitalize on fleeting opportunities[2] and provide predetermined criteria on when to change in quickly-changing market conditions.

For Jonathan Johnson, the CEO of Overstock (an Internet retailing powerhouse competing successfully with Amazon), simple rules establish two lists of priorities: “keep doing” and “stop doing.” He recognizes how easy it is to fall in the trap of not recognizing a sunk cost when people are invested into a project. Establishing simple rules in advance (“when this happens, it’s time to stop”) provides the discipline to pull out of a failing project at the right time.

4. Conduct Profuse Iterative Experimentation & Provide Real-time Coaching

Termites constantly try to find faster routes to find food, better ways to build the mound to protect them from the scorching sun, and better survival techniques—all of which took them many, many trials and errors to discover.

Perfection is not as important as the incremental snowballing effect of frequent, iterative feedback. Constant organizational learning is essential for success, but failures are required for us to learn what works best. To resolve this apparent conflict, today’s organizations must provide a culture of safe risk taking, rapid feedback loops, and a platform to share collective intelligence from failures. As an example, the agile software development approach facilitates learning through rapid iterations, continuous integration, and “failing fast.”

Capital One conducts more than 30,000 “experiments” annually in workplace design, information technology, product features, and other variables[3]. They are maniacally data driven, measuring the outcome of each experiment with rigor. Deloitte has in recent years abandoned its annual performance evaluations (which used to take two million hours a year) in favor of weekly check-ins, end-of-project evaluations, or formal quarterly reviews, as well as ongoing constant feedback[4]. This type of iterative feedback creates a snowball effect in which small changes result in disproportionately large effect. This is how game-changing innovations are created.

5. Facilitate Differentiation & Value The Resulting Diversity

Each termite caste has its own specialized function and is anatomically different from the rest. Soldier termites have big jaws, sharp mandibles, and can spray chemicals to protect the colony. Each caste requires specialized skills and anatomical differentiation.

As humans, we want to feel valued for our unique talents, skills, and ideas. It is important for leaders to promote an environment where each member is recognized for, and continues to develop, his/her subject matter expertise. The resulting diversity of thought and perspective should be not only tolerated (remember diversity tolerance training?) but valued. Reverting to comfortable familiarity breeds a confirmation bias. Research tells us diversity is crucial to develop organizational adaptability to external shock, and to create outliers that fuel tipping points for game-changing innovation.[5]

David Kelly, CEO of IDEO, a global design studio, attributes his success to one simple practice: hiring people with diverse backgrounds and experiences[6]. Engineers, psychologists, marketers, and journalists may be on the same team, helping solve difficult problems they can’t alone.

6. Facilitate Connection & Collaboration

Termites live in colonies. Termites live, work, and sleep as a group. Each termite is part of a larger, symbiotic whole. They copy others’ behaviors. They communicate with simple rules. What each one does has an impact on others, because they are interdependent. The colony does not exist without individual termites, and they benefit from being part of the colony.

We all innately yearn to connect with others. Nature has created intricate mechanisms in our brain to facilitate connection with each other, such as mirror neurons, which help us detect others’ intentions and mimic behaviors[7], and oxytocin, which is secreted during orgasm and nursing[8] and makes us feel good when we bond with each other. Creating a collaborative, cohesive culture is equally important as creating diversity. It includes creating a culture that does not tolerate behaviors that threaten safety and belonging, such as bullying, kingdom, or favoritism.

Collaboration increases individual and team performance.[9] Drawing on the wisdom of the crowd is a new megatrend, which includes crowd funding, Wikipedia, Uber, massive community of bloggers, Linux, TripAdvisor, Udemy, and many more.

7. Step Outside The Termite Mound & See The Whole Structure

This is what termites don’t do that we can and should do as effective leaders. Seeing the emergent pattern both within us, and in interactions with others, is an important leadership competency. Many studies cite systemic thinking and pattern recognition as the most important criterion to determine leadership effectiveness[10],[11].

As leaders, it is imperative to be fully awake and see the isomorphic patterns we might be unconsciously repeating. We need to pull up to the second-floor balcony to see the big-picture context. From there, we can challenge the status quo and current assumptions. We can see how three disparate data points form a line, when less-observant others fail to see the pattern.

SOURCES

[1] Bock, Laszlo. “Work rules!” (2015).

[2] https://hbr.org/2001/01/strategy-as-simple-rules

[3] Khanna, Shilpa, and J. Randolph New. “Revolutionizing the workplace: A case study of the future of work program at Capital One.” Human Resource Management 47.4 (2008): 795.

[4] Buckingham, Marcus, and Ashley Goodall. “Reinventing Performance Management.” Harvard Business Review, April (2015).

[5] Page, Scott E. Diversity and complexity. Princeton University Press, 2010.

[6] http://download.cbsnews.com/media/2013/01/06/60_106_IDEO_796.m4v?ADPARAMS=BRAND=55%7CSITE=162%7CSP=181%7CPOS=100%7CNCAT=cbsnewswap&track1=CBSNews&track2=MobileWeb

[7] Kohler, Evelyne, et al. “Hearing sounds, understanding actions: action representation in mirror neurons.” Science 297.5582 (2002): 846-848.

[8] Neumann, Inga D. “Brain oxytocin: a key regulator of emotional and social behaviours in both females and males.” Journal of neuroendocrinology 20.6 (2008): 858-865.

[9] Chiocchio, François, et al. “The effects of collaboration on performance: A multilevel validation in project teams.” International Journal of Project Organisation and Management 4.1 (2012): 1-37.

[10] Boyatzis, Richard E. “Competencies in the 21st century.” Journal of management development 27.1 (2008): 5-12.

[11] Fullan, Michael. Leadership & sustainability: System thinkers in action. Corwin Press, 2004.

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