Make a Swarm Team : A New Approach on Productivity and Engagement

Chapter 1 : Group Think and Communication

E mails need to be re-imagined , new protocols need to be thought over about using them in the work place and most of all we need to learn to write less of them. In my experience, e-mails are the single biggest productivity killer today and a culture of communicating?through excessive e-mail is an indication of a broken team and an ominous sign that things are going to get worse.

It is simple ! We write e-mails to –

·??????Record a transaction or document for legal purposes

·??????Explain / teach / educate something complex or just to

·??????Inform

It is obvious that e-mails should and will continue to be used for the same purposes as they are the best tool designed for the purpose – as yet ! Yet, a quick look at your inbox will tell you that you could have done without many of them. You will see that many e-mails are politically expedient tools, an attempt to create a record where none was needed , some one avoiding a direct face off , ‘informs’?- that you don’t really care about etc.

Why don’t we fix it ? A few likely reasons –

1. ?Lazy leadership : many leaders revel in it, are indifferent or unwittingly promote it in the name of being informed, cliché of ‘all surprises are bad’ ?etc.
2. Fear of Non conformity : As Heinrich & Boyd wrote in their paper PII: S1090-5138(98)00018-X (harvard.edu),conformist transmission of information is ingrained in our social learning. It helps to survive and avoid problems by doing what the ‘group’ does. We write so many e-mails because everyone else does and it seems to be the ‘safer’ thing to do.
3. It is a symptom, and the problem as always is somewhere in the operating system called CULTURE !

Leaders can begin by actively challenging ‘group-think’ in their teams. A penchant for communication through e-mails in a team?is a sign of group think as employees try to avoid a direct responsibility if things go south. There is likely a trust deficit in the team. Human Culture is cumulative as we learn and build further on what is already available ; group think gets in the way of building forward and kills productivity.

Chapter 2 : Swarm Intelligence

High performing teams have ‘Swarm Intelligence’ which is akin to group think but almost diametrically opposite in its impact. Swarm Intelligence is defined as collective behavior of decentralized or self-organized systems. Think of a flock of birds flying thousands of miles , a colony of bees knowing exactly what each one of them must do , a school of fish swimming in a rhythmic motion and avoiding predators and grey wolves forming packs to hunt. An engaged , smart team operates like this swarm ! It knows its purpose, the task at hand is clear, there is a sense of urgency, and the flow of energy is relentless. It doesn’t need ( and likely have no time ) hundreds of e-mails to communicate as the intelligence of the swarm is all pervasive. Everyone gets it !

Swarm intelligence is created when you build a team with purpose. When values that bind the team together are clear and unambiguous. Clarity of purpose & values helps in creating a certain homogeneity which gives the tribe its unique identity that then becomes the glue that holds the flock as it flies those miles together. I would imagine that a swarm like this would need lesser e-mails and IMs to communicate as it launches that new product , takes a price increase, or works to remove supply chain constraints. A swarm ‘intuitively’ knows how to avoid constraints or barriers as it moves forward and that’s why it moves faster than a traditional team.?

And how does the swarm learn to recognize enablers and to avoid constraints ?

In nature, this is due to a narrow range of behaviors that are best observed in a small neighborhood within the swarm ( nearest neighbor approach ). Here is an excerpt from a NY Times article From Ants to People, an Instinct to Swarm - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

"...Dr. Couzin analyzed how the ants behaved when he tweaked their behavior. If the ants turned away too quickly from oncoming insects, they lost the scent of their trail. If they did not turn fast enough, they ground to a halt and forced ants behind them to slow down. Dr. Couzin found that a narrow range of behavior allowed ants to move as a group as quickly as possible.

It turned out that these optimal ants also spontaneously formed highways. If the ants going in one direction happened to become dense, their chemical trails attracted more ants headed the same way. This feedback caused the ants to form a single packed column. The ants going the other direction turned away from the oncoming traffic and formed flanking lanes..."

?A high functioning team with its eyes clearly set on the prize and bound by the right values and purpose will still need its leaders to constantly flutter their proverbial butterfly wings (The butterfly effect is not what you think it is - The Washington Post ) to ensure that the ‘right range of acceptable behaviors’ are created and shown regularly and clearly.

An intelligent swarm also deals with data better than any other team (Swarm Intelligence in Data Science: Applications, Opportunities and?Challenges - PMC (nih.gov) ) Most teams spend a lot of time generating and processing data and make little use of it at the end any way or worse still, get caught up in the infamous Analysis- Paralysis stage. A swarm knows how to move forward without admiring the problem for too long. Data scientists are using swarm intelligence (SI) algorithm to effectively deal with ‘curse of dimensionality’ where the data sets of the more complex ?and connected world ( esp. big data ) have so many dimensions and variables that it is getting impossible to create usable models based on historical data alone. The algorithm needs to have a built in AI that can analyze variations in small neighborhoods, observe the resultant impacts and picks up the most optimal route forward.

Summary :

John M Keynes, one of the famous dads of modern capitalism had hoped that capitalism will take us to a future where we would have a 15 hour work-week and the big economic problem of future will be one of ?dealing with ‘free-time’ and not with toil. Yet, 90 years later, economists are trying to solve a ‘ productivity puzzle’ where productivity of labor is declining despite everyone working harder than Keynes had hoped. Stagnation of productivity growth following the financial crisis of 2008-09 is known as productivity puzzle but the labor productivity has been declining for decades now -

While economists and political systems of the world are trying to fix it, the workers of modern economies are paying a price today. We all have days when as we wrapped them up we felt not having achieved much , having wasted the day in writing e-mails , sitting in meetings or just crunching some useless numbers. A good worker wants to be in the ‘flow’ ( defined as the optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best ) and deserves conditions that enable her to do her best. It is leaders’ responsibility , the singular task of creating that environment where the team is at its productive best. The biggest moral responsibility for the leader is to keep fluttering her butterfly wings in the swarm !