Remember the story of ants being able to move objects many times their weight? Well, it’s true and I’ve got a picture to share with you. I spotted this dead catepillar recently, and it was being swarmed all over by ants.
How the caterpillar met its unfortunate death or how long ago it had died was not known but the ants had already discovered it and was trying to carry it away.
Unfortunately, they weren’t making much headway. Yes, they were able to move the caterpillar but they were uncoordinated and disjointed.
I stood nearby to watch the progress or should I say, the lack of progress. For all of 30 minutes, the caterpillar’s carcass had hardly moved an inch from where it previously was. For most of this time, it was simply being turned clockwise or anti-clockwise. The ants were moving it, but it was being moved only in circles and not in any particular direction.
It wasn’t so much that they did not know where to carry the caterpillar. Instead, I would put the ant’s inefficiency down to a lack of team work among them. These were all workers ants, all tuned expertly to foraging for food and bringing it back to the nest. For simple tasks that could be broken down into discrete jobs, the ants were probably very proficient. But for a more complicated task that require leadership and team work, it was beyond the ants’ abilities.
Without a leader to organise them properly and show them where to go, all they could do was to go around in circles.
We can learn a lot from the ants. In our careers, the importance of effective team work cannot be over-emphasised. There are probably many simple tasks which an individual can do exceptionally well but team work becomes especially important when you progress to complicated tasks. If you have team members all working independently without a concerted goal in mind, jobs can get out of hand and budget can be over-run. And that’s where good leadership comes in too, to guide the team members and ensure that there is a focus and the job gets done fast and well.