32 Strategy Magazine

www.sps.org.uk I Issue 27 I May 2011

www.sps.org.uk I Issue 27 I May 2011

Strategy Magazine

33

The winning strategy of bees

Strategy for bees is simple. It is synonymous with an ability to succeed despite constant environmental changes, an ability that sets an example for corporations as they face up to a volatile future. By Michael OMalley

can be expedited if needed. The goal is to maintain stability inside the hive without sacrificing the ability to make necessary internal adjustments. The business lesson is to be sure that your organisation has an intimate, measurable connection between the outside world and the internal operations of the organisation, allowing yourself room to manoeuvre as circumstances warrant.

The most important lesson of the hive, as it should be for business, is to protect the future. Bees maintain a contingency of scouts that are on the lookout for the next new thing.

Accommodate
Bees mostly alter their external world by being good citizens of the planet, and helping themselves while they are at it. First, they dont extract all of the pollen or nectar from flowers. That enables the flowers to regenerate more quickly than if they had been depleted. Second, the bees pollinate and thereby reproduce the very commodity they need to survive.

T
Be sure your organisation has an intimate, measurable connection between the outside world and internal operations.

here are only four methods of adaptation any animal, person, or organisation can take. These adaptive responses are: change yourself or the organisation to comply with new needs in the environment (assimilate); change external circumstances to better align with your goals and internal capabilities (accommodate); enhance the environment by finding ways that your organisation alone can benefit to the exclusion of would-be competitors (enrichment); or decide that the environment is no longer hospitable to success and move on (exit). A decision must be made over which of the four approaches to use and within those, which tactic is best, but the example set by bees can help avoid over-thinking strategy.

Assimilate
Since they do not have the benefit of handbooks or guides, it may be surprising that bees adapt in all of these ways and it may be useful to see how and why they

behave as they do. One of the hallmarks of a bee colony is the rapidity with which it can adjust internal resources to meet external demands. For example, nectar foragers returning to the hive hand their nectar to receiver bees who then stow the nectar away in the comb. Each forager is immediately able to detect what broader conditions are like in the outside world and the organisations ability to meet market demands by using one simple measure: how long does it take to locate a receiver bee? If receivers are readily available, for example, that tells foragers that nectar is scarce and that in order to bring in more they will need more foragers in the field. So they send out signals that recruit more foragers. The internal order of the hive is flexigid there is a structure but it can be modified to meet the needs of the colony. For example, some bees can switch jobs as needed and all bee colonies have a small contingent of precocious bees, or fast trackers, whose development

Enrichment
Bees have been around for more than 100 million years and they merit the distinction of being one of Earths most enduring inhabitants by being fierce competitors. One of the ways they succeed is by creating near-monopoly conditions in the areas in which they harvest and secure food. The most effective weapon the bees have in carving out, or enriching, territory for themselves is being faster than anyone else to the harvest.

entire foraging workforce to the most lucrative veins of nectar. Bees are not short-termists. Instead, their framework is to maximize gains over a broad geographic area and extended time horizon. The most important lesson of the hive, as it should be for business, is to protect the future. Within the colony, this is clearly evidenced by the fact that bees always maintain a contingency of scouts that are on the lookout for the next new thing. In fact, the worse conditions get in general, the more scouts the bees send out to explore.

Minimise risks
There is more to learn about bees evolutionary longevity. They seldom fall victim to the unexpected through taking excessive risks. The other side of adaptation is an acute ability to prevent or minimise risks. Bees persist in spite of failure. Failure is inevitable in the hive but the bees are undeterred by a single incidence of failure because they have a

Exit
The bees will return to flowers that have been depleted when the flowers have renewed themselves but they will abandon the site once they have harvested the riches it holds. There is a reason they are able to let go of one place in favour of another so easily: they never send their

34 Strategy Magazine

www.sps.org.uk I Issue 27 I May 2011

One of the hallmarks of a bee colony is the rapidity with which it can adjust internal resources to meet external demands.

About the Author

Michael OMalley is executive editor

for business, economics and law at Yale university Press, and adjunct professor at Columbia university business School. he is the author of The Wisdom of
Bees: What the Hive Can Teach Business about Leadership, Efficiency, and Growth,

long-term perspective and multiple chances to obtain favourable results: they implicitly realise that they do not have to succeed every time in order to be successful. Bees make good enough decisions. They act with incomplete information. When colonies divest themselves of a swarm, the resulting cluster of bees must find a new place to live quickly. Consequently, they do not invest in a lengthy search for the perfect home. Instead, they opt for a home that is good enough, using standards they have internalised and decision processes that protect them against costly errors.

replaced, and if specialised parts (bees performing specific tasks) are lost, others are ready to take their place. Since mistakes are certain to be made when the results cant be known ahead of time, it is important to make the right mistakes. Bees face a resource allocation dilemma concerning when and how much honeycomb to build. If they build too much too soon they will deplete honey stores and threaten the viability of the hive. On the other hand, doing too little too late will rob bees of their essential foodstuff in the future as they will not have the storage space for their honey. If a bee is going to make a mistake, the natural preference is to overbuild when the nectar is flowing in and underbuild when nectar is sparse. The variable criterion regarding the availability of space biases their decisions in these directions. The bees will on occasion err but having too much space when times are good and too little when times are bad are not poor positions to be in. Thus, while it is not always possible to avoid mistakes, it is possible to choose the types of mistakes.

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The right mistakes

No matter how slim the chance, the one thing a hive cannot afford is catastrophic failure, since for them the result is death. Consequently, colonies do not roll the dice with their lives at stake. Instead, they build redundancies into their operations so that if information goes missing, it is quickly

published by Portfolio. www.thewisdomofbees.com