Bees Do It, Birds Do It, Even Orgs Do It

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Swarm Watch

Competencies: decision making, communication skills, time management, organizational design, collaboration, trust

Who benefits: planners, organizational consultants, visionaries

Consultant Usage: Highly recommended for any organizational development consultant

What’s it about? One of my favorite novelists is Martin Cruz Smith (Gorky Park).  When I came across this quote from him, I knew I had to investigate the book he was writing about: “(Author Peter Miller) has proven that there is intelligent life on earth, but it is not necessarily us. What a delightful, eye-opening book.”

The rather long-named book is The Smart Swarm: How Understanding Flocks, Schools, and Colonies Can Make Us Better at Communicating, Decision Making, and Getting Things Done.

It has just been released.  And I agree with reviewer Smith.  It is delightful.  It is also entertaining and educational. 

The first half of the book focuses mainly on birds (flocks), fish (schools) and ants (colonies).  Weird?  Maybe.  Educational?  Definitely.  Interesting.  Absolutely.  And there are some practical applications thrown in to remind the reader that the book is about human organizations.  I loved the example of how Southwest Airline tested its open seating policy against an ant simulation.

The second half of the book is more focused on human organizations of the future.  Those of you with the right Myers-Briggs bent will find it absorbing.  For the most part the book is upbeat and optimistic.  However, I was personally disturbed about the number of times the author commented on how members of smart swarms often have little idea of the big picture (the mission, the vision).

What is a “smart swarm”?  The author defines it as “a group of individuals who respond to one another and to their environment in ways that give them the power, as a group, to cope with uncertainty, complexity and change.”

Survival of the ants … “demands a set of skills that balances group behavior with self interest”. 

Do not miss the chapter on locusts gone nuts (my words and italics).

In the end, the book is about the predicting the evolution of organizational behavior and structure.  It is fascinating and provocative.

If you want more, I also recommend last year’s cleverly titled book The Perfect Swarm: The Science of Complexity in Everyday Life.

This book begins with, I KID YOU NOT, a story of 97 locusts being tied down with their head immobilized and forced to watch Star Wars.  If that doesn’t get your attention, absolutely nothing will! 

The book came out in December of 2009 and is similar in focus as The Smart Swarm.  It draws lessons from nature to help people and organizations make better individual and group decisions. 

I like it when an author clearly expresses (him/her)self in telling us what we are about to read.  Len Fisher (author) does it so well I will leave it to him to tell you what this book is about:

“The modern science of complexity has shown that collective behavior in animal groups (especially those of insects such as locusts, bees, and ants) emerges from a set of very simple rules for interaction between neighbors.  It has also revealed that many of the complex patters in human society arise from similarly simple rules of social interaction between individuals.  My ultimate aim in this book is to explore how the process works and, more importantly, to help find simple rules that might guide us through the fog of complexity that so often seems to enshroud our lives.” 

The authors sharply disagree on “intelligence” in the non-human world.  Otherwise, the two books are remarkably similar.  The Smart Swarm is a more organizationally oriented, The Perfect Swarm is more individually and group oriented.  The Perfect Swarm is for me a little easier read, but that is mainly my style preference.  There is also only eight months difference in the release of the two books.  I put The Smart Swarm first in this review because it has just been released and there is some “buzz” going around about it.  But they are both great reads!

Catch you later
[tags]swarm, complexity, chaos theory, fog of complexity, rules to live by, adaptive systems, complex adaptive systems, human systems,bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.