Premise:
The traditional organizational paradigm, defined by rigid hierarchies and linear command-and-control loops is at a breaking point and no longer an effective form of leadership.
What we need now is the ability to respond quickly and effectively, which means that the role of leaders needs to evolve from being the decision maker to the conductor of teams making the right decisions.
In such a scenario, the primary constraint is no longer a lack of data, but an abundance of data and the inability to process them at the speed at which they are created.
In a world which changes and transforms at a breakneck pace, teams that are able to adjust to the pace and are able to handle this speed and respond to the fast changes (and not react) in a meaningful way are the one’s that will succeed and thrive.
One way that leaders can learn to do this is from mother nature. The way ants, fish, birds or bees come together and be far more intelligent as a group than as individuals has a lot of lessons for leaders. This is called Swarm Intelligence.
Swarm Intelligence:
Swarm Intelligence (SI) emerged as a result of a necessary evolutionary process. It is a decentralized model where global “intelligence” is not a top-down directive, but an emergent behavior born from simple agents interacting locally responding to their immediate environment with a simple set of rules, collectively creating far more intelligent results that would not be possible, for any of the individuals to create.
As leaders, there is a lot that we can learn from Swarm Intelligence. Here are some things that I have learnt:
Illusion of control:
When we are operating in a complex adaptive system and the system is experiencing a lot of changes, fast, it is virtually impossible for the leader to stay on top of all the things.
We need to give away any illusion of control that we might have on the system. By accepting this, we can now figure out how to respond to these changes better.
This also means that we delegate the decision making and therefore the speed of responding to the edges of the system or in other words, the frontline staff who are the first to see the changes in the system.
Emergence:
Swarms are decentralised by nature as there is no one leader who controls the behavior of the group. Swarms form and their intelligence comes from every member following a small set of rules that enables the intelligence to emerge.
As leaders, we need to identify a small set of rules that everyone on the team knows and needs to operate within. These rules will vary from team to team but as long as everyone on the team knows what these rules are and operate within them, collective intelligence emerges, at speed.
Stigmergy (Speed of Communication) :
One of the foundational rules that every team needs to have is how they communicate. As leaders, we need to create communication pathways wherein our teams are able to communicate quickly and in predictable ways.
Everyone knows what is signal and what is noise for the team, so that signal travels fast within the team and noise is filtered at source.
Everyone also knows what are the teams goals and what decisions will move us towards them and the simple rules guide them to make those decisions every single time.
One of the most predictable reasons why teams fail is due to a breakdown in their communications. So, we would be better off to ensure that this never happens in our teams.
Scalability and Flexibility:
A true swarm maintains efficiency regardless of magnitude. Because the rules remain local, the system can scale infinitely by adding nodes without a corresponding increase in central processing requirements.
As a leader, if we identify the right rules for our team to operate within, the number of people operating within the team doesn’t really matter. WE can scale our responses – both in terms of efficiency and effectiveness or the right responses at speed.
Redundancy and Robustness:
The loss of any individual agent — or group of agents — must not compromise the mission. This pillar justifies the move toward decentralization; without it, the system lacks the resilience to survive complex challenges.
As long as we are operating within the set rules, losing an agent doesn’t matter, as we can cover for them and scale.
It is important to reiterate that the rules need to be simple to understand and follow and limited to a small number so that we can remember them all at any given time and designed to address any situation or input that we might face.
Simple Rules
I have mentioned many times about the need for simple, clear and a small set of rules, that teams need to follow. Now lets have a look at what could this look like.
Lets take the example of Southwest Airlines. They are known to have a culture that enables all their employees to respond to any situation, by asking a very simple question – “Will this help make us the lowest cost airline?”. If the answer is a “Yes”, they go ahead and make the decision and act. If the answer is a “No”, they look for an option, that can convert the answer to a “yes” and do that.
Lets take the example of Amazon. Amazon is known for their obsession with their customers and cost, to the extent that Jeff Bezos was known to have an empty chair in his meetings, symbolizing the customer. Any decision they make needs to be aligned with the customers.
Let’s take the example of Alcoa. When they were looking to transform, their CEO had one simple goal – we need to reduce the number of safety incidents to Zero. That made it fairly simple for everyone faced with a decision to make – What decision will move us toward the goal of zero safety incidents.
Power dynamics
One of the things that typically is a big challenge in making this a reality is power dynamics. When leaders are reluctant to give their power away or there is a power play within the team, which means that people in the team are jockeying for power, this entire idea of swarm intelligence falls flat.
This needs to be addressed first before we can do any kind of high performance from the team. This also showcases an underlying lack of trust and psychological safety. This also means that there is an imbalance of power, access and information asymmetry, that also needs to be fixed.
Conclusion:
In the landscape of Complex Adaptive Systems, the role of the “Leader” needs to undergo a radical metamorphosis – from an “Operator” who dictates movement to a “Conductor” who synchronizes the actions and an “Architect” who designs the environment that we function in.
A leader worth following does not seek to be the most intelligent node in the network; they seek to curate the interactions that allow a collective, synergistic intelligence to flourish.
Swarm Intelligence is not a heuristic accident; it is the result of strict, non-negotiable rules. And the role of the leader is to build these rules and design a culture where everyone knows what these rules are and operate within them.
