Collective compass

aconfusedprimate

Ants

 
Ants are curious organisms. They are always busy. I mean always. Have you ever seen an ant that is not in hurry? Its unfair that bees get the idiom ‘Busy as a bee’ just because they start with same alphabet. I have see plenty of bees that are just sitting idle of a wall or a leaf. Though, I cannot change the existing language, I can add another idiom. ‘As industrious as an Ant’.

Ants have a social hierarchy. The queen is the founder and responsible for laying eggs. Drones are the males responsible for mating with the queen while worker ants are responsible for building and maintaining the nest, protecting the colony from other ants and, most importantly, feeding the colony. The most fascinating aspect of worker ants is the way they carry food. If you observe the below animation closely, you will notice that Ants keep changing places. Its not like they are taking turns at the job or taking frequent breaks from their task. You will also notice that each time a new ant joins the effort, there is a slight alteration in the direction.

Worker ants have a collective goal. They trust each and every one of the ants to work towards the same goal. When ant leaves its position and wanders around, it is actually scouting for the direction they need to travel in and when it comes back and tugs in a different direction, the rest of the group just follow the new direction, without even a slight hesitation.


A compass is a tool that tells you direction. But it does its job only if its working properly. A broken compass will show a wrong direction. Lets look at it as each ant has its own compass, each member of the group, takes turns to check their compass and tell the rest of the group to follow their compass. The rest of the pack ignore the readings in their compasses and just follow the latest information. Also there is no single ant forcing others to follow only its directions. It sounds like a very inefficient plan. But it ants always make their way back to their nest.
 
Now, if we give a group of human beings a compass each. Some working and some broken without telling them who has the proper ones and repeat this experiment of asking them to go from Point A to Point B with no single one having any idea where their destination is, I would bet one of the two things with happen. They will either remain at the same location arguing or end up being influenced by the most dominant member and leave the result to the change of the dominant member’s compass being correct.

All this might seem like a stupid Idea. When would anyone be in this kind of situation. Well, this happens often in life and more often at work. Whenever we embark of a journey to uncharted territories with a group/team of people, almost everyone in the group has an opinion on how to go about it. But they seldom trust each other. They fail to consider that they might have a broken compass.

I don’t mean to say the one must follow everyone’s advice. It would be ridiculous. But one should at least give a benefit of doubt to other ideas. There is a very good quote in the movie “Ratatouille”. It says “Everybody can cook”. It doesn’t mean that each and everyone of us would make an excellent cook. It means that a great cook can come from anywhere.

 

 

 

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