By Nimroth Gwetsa, 11 November 2014

(Image: http://www.pestworldforkids.org/pest-guide/ants)

We are told ants are among best “open-source educators” on our planet that could give life’s most valuable lesson to sluggards. A quotation from King Solomon’s writings says, “Go to the ant, O sluggard, observe her ways and be wise, which, having no chief, officer or ruler, prepares her food in the summer and gathers her provision in the harvest.”

I have read this passage many times before. I never thought it applied to me. I did not consider myself a lazybones. I would bet that many do not regard themselves as sluggards either. This is not surprising because we define a sluggard as a lazy person avoiding physical activities. How many times have we trivialised a situation or failed to apply our minds properly and hastily made decisions that we later regretted? Sluggishness does not only relate to physical activities, but mental as well. We should see this passage as applicable to our situation considering poor judgements we occasionally make.

I heeded King Solomon’s advice and sought to discover lessons I could learn in business from observing ants. This took me to enrol at the “Ants Academy of Business Science” with Google as my online library. I bumped into many articles on ants from National Geographic and universities such as Harvard, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

What I found was a reminder on principles of ensuring success in life, which many of us take for granted in today’s rat race.

Principle 1 – Maintaining Your Identity, Purpose and Focus

Ants are ants and do not try to be bees, or flies or any other insect for that matter. They are happy being who they are and with what they are good at. They continue their lives daily doing what ants do. This does not mean ants have no competition or predators. They have them in abundance. We are their biggest predators, especially for household ants. Our triumph over them is only temporary. They continue to thrive unless we sustain costly efforts of keeping them out of our homes.

A lesson in business is that we should know who we are, what our purpose is and therefore what our priorities are. We are sometimes flustered by competition and lose focus trying to emulate our competitors. We should play our game at our strength and strive to be the best we could be in our circumstances.

Principle 2 – Clarity of Roles and Responsibilities

Ants are not confused about “who does what”. There is no plotting against others or jockeying for positions. No one is enslaved and no one chases others following up completion of tasks.

Ants conform to a well-defined system of operations. They perform their roles and responsibilities well. According to articles from the above renowned institutions, ant colonies include:

1. The queen. She heads the ant community. Her main responsibility is to lay thousands of eggs to ensure the survival of the colony. The ant colony could only be destroyed if the queen is killed or moved. Considering the ease with which ants multiply, this bears testimony to the queen’s outstanding role she plays in expanding her colony.

2. Male ants. Their sole purpose is mating with the queen and disappearing from the scene thereafter (i.e., they may soon die afterwards – Ouch!). They do not linger, chit-chat to workers in the colony, or sow division among workers. They bully or harass no one. They focus on their primary job, spreading their seed to lay the foundation for the expansion of the colony.

3. Worker ants. Workers are wingless, sterile females whose primary role is to forage for food, work on the nest, care for the queen’s offspring, protect the community and perform many other duties. Others would see this as giving credence to Margaret Thatcher’s saying, “If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman”.

In business, people like doing other people’s jobs and not theirs. Everyone is suddenly an expert CEO, knowing what the company should be doing and why the incumbent CEO is wrong. The same issues could be seen in many other leadership roles. Before people were employed, they were happy to be assigned those tasks. Reluctant to focus on their tasks, they now have opinions about other people’s roles and responsibilities.

There is value in maintaining humility and listening to other people’s views. Equally so, there needs to be growth for the company to thrive. Like ants, such growth comes when all employees diligently fulfil their roles and responsibilities.

The moment you take eyes off your tasks and focus on someone else’s, not only would your tasks be incomplete, but you would be causing disturbances in the completion of other’s tasks. Failure would be inevitable.

Principle 3 – Importance of Shared Strategy and Communication

Ants follow the same path however far they have to forage for food. They do not clash or crush each other. They do not argue. They have one path and two directions, one is the outgoing direction to collect or look for food and the other, incoming to bring food. They are united in following this path.

According to National Geographic, “(a)nts communicate and cooperate by using chemicals that can alert others to danger or lead them to a promising food source.” These chemicals are pheromones. The smell helps them identify members of their colony and the path to their destinations. The only time an ant would lose direction is when this smell is cut off. That is why standing on the path of ants disrupts them. But after bumping into one another in an opposite direction, you would see ants using their heads “feeling” each other. That is how they communicate, by “smelling” each other to detect the same flavour of their pheromone. As soon as they get confirmation, they reconnect the new path by following each other’s pheromone left along the path in opposite directions. Soon the detour or diversion would be their newly found path to respective destinations.

In business, pheromones could be equated with the strategy and vision of the company. No company would thrive having many visions and strategies all being executed simultaneously. This would be chaotic to staff and the company would fail.

Likewise, without a strategy, a company would fail. I have heard people say some companies succeed despite not having a strategy. I would put my neck on the block and say that is balderdash! There is no such thing. They may not have defined their strategy explicitly, but that does not mean it does not exist tacitly. Even if the strategy is not spoken, it is reflected in the behaviour of people, especially leaders in the organisation. Actions speak louder than words. From observing those actions, we could deduce what the strategy for the organisation is.

To avoid confusion in the workplace, leaders should define strategies everyone in the organisation could understand and follow. A well-understood strategy and vision help and inspire staff know what to do when encountering difficulties. The strategy would be to staff, like ants reestablishing their path after it has been disrupted by following pheromones left by the other along the path.

Staff should also focus on completing their assigned roles and responsibilities. Their efforts would grow the company and improve its financial performance. These improvements could result in staff assigned better roles in the company.

Principle 4 – Benefits of Effort, Endurance and Productivity

Ants can carry objects weighing more than three times their body weight. There are reported cases of ants carrying objects as heavy as hundred times their body weight. These creatures are tougher than nails and have greater endurance considering they travel long distances to collect and deliver food far exceeding their body weight.

In business, we should all strive to work smarter and harder using technology enabling resources. Technology enables us to carry capacity beyond our natural abilities and could simplify our approach to completing tasks. We should therefore produce more in the same allocation of time in line with improvements in technologies we use. Yet the more technology improves, the more distracted and unproductive we become. We are quick to focus on personal issues than focus on our mission. 

Principle 5 – Importance of Solving Problems through Teamwork

No problem is too big for them. Ants can tackle big objects like flies, lizards. They team up if a problem is too big for one ant to tackle.

In business, there is a time and place for heroism. For all other times, there should be teamwork. Teaming allows greater results to be reached with ease. Heroism is momentary and should not be the default way business is conducted. Unhealthy competition among staff is destructive and brings ills in the organisation. At best, let comparisons among staff be about aligning performance against peers and striving for improvements. Even the top performer would not be focusing on their poor performing colleagues and be complacent, but would strive to better their past best performance.

Principle 6 – Managing Risks through Planning, Preparation and Execution

Ants forage for food during warmer climates and hibernate in winter. Their gathering of food in summer covers their immediate and longer-term needs. They also “know”, sometimes days or weeks beforehand, when it is about to rain. They would then prepare by storing food and building walls around their nests. Household ones sometimes move to higher places such as the roof to establish new nests.

From a business perspective, we have read many horror stories about companies getting liquidated, revealing inadequate steps taken by leaders in managing risks in the company.

Profitability ensures the survival of companies. Investing profits in the business not only guarantees its survival but expands its. Successful expansion leads to business thriving. Business should not fall in the trap of consumerism by having larger sums of profits expended on materialism. Economic hardship is a reality. Plan and prepare for that season.

Conclusion
More could still be learnt from ants. This article did not exhaust all the lessons. Ants may be a nuisance in our households, yet their role is important in the environment.

Similarly, each business should serve its purpose. Each purpose should solve problems affecting human beings. Business should be concerned about solving problems human beings are concerned about. When companies focus on this purpose and become the best they could be, there should be no reason for companies failing to thrive despite the presence of competition and changing business conditions.

Indeed, ants pack a lot of lessons we could still learn. Enlightenment comes when we become hungry and act on the hunger for knowledge. In so doing, wisdom is gained.

Ants continue to execute these principles consistently in their lives. No wonder they are thriving despite powerful arsenal human beings have against them.

As for us in business, do we see ourselves as sluggards to heed King Solomon’s advice to seek wisdom by observing ants?