Editor's note: A bee colony has thousands to tens of thousands of bees, consisting of a queen bee, a small number of male bees, and numerous worker bees. As the only female bee in the hive to have fertility, the "work performance" of the queen bee directly determines the rise and fall of the hive. This is somewhat similar to the role of a leader in an enterprise. Can business leaders learn from the highly efficient, multi-purpose swarm organization? This article is compiled from Medium's original article titled "What business leaders can learn from honeybees".
How can we make our team work more efficiently? Four years ago, when I was scratching my cheeks to improve the efficiency of my company, I was thinking about a question: What is the most efficient organization in the world? I just want to have a team like that: very efficient, generate money and come to fruition, so that we can focus more on the projects we want to do, and do what we want. So I looked up Google and found that the most efficient organization in the world is the swarm.
Then, on this fate-changing day, I was driving and overheard news about bees on the radio. NPR's field reporter interviews a beekeeper and reports on the wonders of how bees work.
I listened to it all the way and was most impressed by how quickly the swarm expanded, almost effortlessly. You may have experienced it first-hand. One day there was a bee buzzing outside the window, and the next day a large swarm came. How do bees do it?
Every bee in the colony knows that they only need to do two things well, and the priorities remain the same, and they always do. First, every bee must keep the queen bee safe, which is a top priority, because the queen bee is extremely important to the colony; the second task must be done when the first one is guaranteed, which is the basic work of the bee. As a result, the swarm can flourish and grow.
The working mechanism of the colony is as follows:
Each colony has a queen bee who is responsible for laying eggs. So, I call the queen bee role qbr (queen bee role). As long as the queen bee's work is smooth, the bee colony can reproduce normally and grow rapidly; if the queen bee is derelict in its duties and the work is not smooth, the entire bee colony suffers.
In the middle is the queen bee. Queen bee, also known as queen bee, queen bee, is the only female bee in the bee colony that can lay eggs normally, and the queen bee is usually the mother of other members of the bee colony, so it is also called the mother bee. There may be thousands to tens of thousands of bees in a bee colony, but there will only be one queen.
Every bee knows that if the colony is to prosper, the spawning process is crucial, so it depends on the queen bee, so all the bees will protect her and support her, so that she has a good stomach and a place to live. In this way, the queen bee has no worries and can concentrate on spawning.
The queen bee herself is not an integral part of the swarm, her importance comes from her location and the role she plays. Spawning should be fast and continuous. It doesn't matter which bee is the queen bee, what matters is the role of the queen bee itself. If the queen bee dies, or cannot lay eggs, the colony will quickly replace it with a new queen bee, so that the role and function of the queen bee can continue.
As soon as the bees ensure that the queen bee role is met, they start to do the basic work, collect pollen, find nectar, take care of the eggs and larvae, keep the hive warm, defend the hive, and so on.
After listening to the mechanism of the bee colony operation, I realized that if the managers of the company can also identify the queen bee role, then the quality of life of the company and themselves will rise significantly. I immediately decided to test the theory in my own business, which I later extended to my client Cindy. Cindy is a regular client who has been looking for me for one-on-one consultations for years.
If you've survived my previous book, Surge, you probably remember Cindy's story. Simply put, I guided Cindy through the soaring stage of her career. She strictly followed the advice I gave her, and as a result, witnessed the gratifying growth from one customer for several months to a reliable customer every day. Her company is growing fast, and now, there are opportunities everywhere, new and exciting experiences. The quality of customers continues to improve, and the revenue is getting better and better. However, Cindy's workload is also getting bigger and bigger, and she feels overwhelmed and even flustered. She began to work non-stop, but only barely kept up with the huge demands of her customers.
Cindy's voice sounds very comfortable, she is very vocal, a bit like a female version of President Clinton. But one day when she couldn't stand the pressure and cried and talked, she wasn't so charming.
"Don't confuse the queen bee character with the queen bee itself, what is important to the colony is the queen bee role."
When I asked Cindy what her queen bee role was, Cindy couldn't think of an answer for a moment. We had some discussions, and she concluded that her core function was to achieve "understanding and clear communication." Cindy said, "When I talk to clients, no matter what happens to them, I will find a way to make them understand their current situation, let them regain confidence, and let their hearts be at peace." For my company, this kind of communication keeps everything on track,"
Whenever Cindy doesn't greet her clients, take the time to understand their concerns, and give them clear solutions, her earnings drop noticeably. If she does all of this, her income will increase, so she feels that communicating with customers is the key to the success of her business.
The role of the queen bee is to lay eggs for the colony, and Cindy's role in the enterprise is to communicate with customers. The success of your business depends on what is your queen bee role.
"Working 40 hours a week, how much time do you spend on your queen bee role (communicating with customers)?" I asked Cindy.
She didn't answer for a long time. It's not because she's calculating exactly how much time she's spending, it's that she knows what the answer is and is just thinking about what the answer means. Cindy finally spoke, "About two hours." ”
With 40 hours of work, only two hours are spent working in the role of queen bee. That is, she only spent 5% of her time in the most important role in her company. To be honest, Cindy works more than 40 hours, so she spends less than 5% of her time in her most important roles. The other 95 percent of the time, she's busy with things like finance and management. Even as more people were hired, her job didn't get any easier, it became more and more entrenched, because the addition of these new employees only helped her with her affairs, and the time the company spent on management actually increased greatly.
But every decision still has to go through her hand. She has two jobs, one is her own job, but to answer the endless questions of her employees. Her business is like an octopus, the employees are just a few more pairs of hands, and the brain work still belongs to Cindy. Therefore, this form of work organization brings her more pressure.
Once we found Cindy's Queen Bee character, we started making plan changes. She set a goal: to do her best to play her queen bee role. She told her team about the importance of working in the queen bee role (communicating with clients); she even hung a huge peace marker in her office to remind herself that the queen bee's job is to find ways to show understanding to customers, to make them feel at peace, and to reassure them. She then handed over parts of her non-queen bee work to assistants, other employees, and the outsourced team.
After the plan was implemented in the company, she concentrated on doing her queen bee job. Soon, she found that she was blocking her by a large number of customers, but it was difficult to engage, and she was often dissatisfied, so she immediately decided to break off relations with them.
Three months later. I asked about Cindy's recent situation. She replied excitedly, "I can't believe we're growing faster than ever and our business is smooth." Guess what else is good? ”
"Just tell me, I'll listen."
"Last week, I actually had time to plant flowers and tinkered with them all weekend,"
Cindy loves growing flowers, which is her hobby. But before her work was stressful, she didn't have time to take care of the garden. Now, by concentrating on simplifying her work, Cindy can enjoy weekends again, her private life is comfortable, and her business is thriving.
Produced by the compilation group. Editor: Hao Pengcheng