Leadership lessons from nature

This post is actually based on a recent article that I read recently and liked. It was originally posted by Ndubuisi Ekekwe, founder of non-profit African Institute of Technology.

Quite often we tend to overlook some obvious lessons we can learn from nature. Even if we do focus, we tend to look at big things and miss out on the tiny ones.

Actually turning our attention to ants, its quite easy to notice how organized they are in accomplishing seemingly complex tasks. For example, when they encounter some food – just from nowhere, a team of ants immediately gather and help one another and move the food to their “colony”.

Without any form of supervision they quite easily get together in moving an object sometimes several times their size (20-30 times!). Comparing this to routine projects, we think that projects get more challenging when there are hurdles and issues. Just going by that, if we were seemily disturb this gathering of ants, they  scatter away but just for a while, and quickly regroup, and execute the task.

Another key point is Ants always tow a line – mostly along the walls or a surface. There’s hardly any pushing, or overtaking or commotion.

There are some amazing takeaways from such events we see in nature. Great example of teamwork, trust, helping each other in accomplishing tasks. But more importantly very focussed and possessing the ability to regroup.

Apparently King Solomon had also once criticized a lazy man, urging him to learn from the ants and become wiser.

And one of the popular Hindu epics, Srimad Bhagavatam, narrates a conversation between a King (Yadu dynasty) and a wandering saint (Dattatreya) who imparts wisdom to the king citing examples from nature. There are as many as 24 such Gurus (teachers) that the saint refers to, and thereby enlightens the king.

Essentially knowledge is all around us, it is down to how we look and how much we tune into the happenings around us.