How Biomimicry & Swarm Intelligence Can Inspire Social Innovation to Solve Workplace Disengagement.
- samuelepremi
- Apr 13, 2023
- 3 min read
Termites have inspired architects to improve building cooling systems by mimicking the ventilation systems in their mounds. Scientists have developed an underwater adhesive that was three times more powerful than the ones at the time by drawing inspiration from mussels. Swimsuits inspired by shark skin are so efficient that they have been banned from major swimming competitions.
What do these innovations have in common?
They all focus on technical solutions. However, biomimicry can also be applied to social innovations or at least provide hints about where to search. For example, locusts when joining a swarm grows their brains by approximately 30% in the areas associated with learning and processing complex information, while areas devoted to vision and smell decrease markedly. Living in a swarm can be challenging, and sometimes it can lead to an increase in an individual's abilities in one way while decreasing them in another. Entering a swarm is more complicated as it requires new skills like navigating through other members of your species. However, once an individual enters the swarm, life also becomes easier as they do not have to make decisions about where to find food; they simply follow their fellow locust buddies.
When humans come together in swarms, we call it a team ….
… organization, or society depending on the size of the group. The term "swarm intelligence" refers to the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, whether they are natural or artificial. While swarm intelligence in the animal kingdom is largely determined by biological limitations, humans need to be more conscious and deliberate in their self-organization, using rules and systems to guide their behavior. These rules can be formal or informal, such as road traffic regulations or cultural etiquette, and the systems can be tangible or intangible, such as networks of roads or voting rights.
Rules and systems are derived from individual and collective narratives. A good example of this is the French Revolution. Before the Revolution, the justification for the separation into nobility and the working class was the belief in a God-given order. When this narrative changed, there was a need for new rules and systems. Individual freedom and democracy were adopted as the new values.
Narratives in the workplace
What narratives currently shape the rules and systems in the workplace? Let's focus on the narratives we tell each other about our jobs. Examples of such narratives are "work sucks," "the business world is a hostile place," and "we've always done it that way." Another narrative is the deep conviction that there needs to be changed in an organization, but there is a feeling of powerlessness. "I am only a simple employee" is a common refrain. These narratives are also reflected in popular cultures, such as in TV series like "The Office," books like "Bullshit Jobs," and even in “Dilbert Cartoons” which highlight the absurdity of working reality for most people.
Disengagement is the new epidemic.
To put this into perspective, studies show that 85% of the workforce is either unengaged or actively disengaged, meaning that most employees view their workplace negatively or only do the bare minimum to get through the day, with little to no emotional attachment. This lack of engagement can also have a significant impact on a company's key KPIs. Companies with poor engagement scores earn an operating income that is 32.7% lower than companies with more engaged employees. Additionally, disengaged employees cost organizations approximately $3,400 for every $10,000 in annual salary.
The solution is already there... it “just” needs to be implemented.
This is an enormous waste of time and money, resources that we could instead invest in addressing global issues we are currently facing. But how can we solve such a deeply rooted, fundamental problem? What do we need to solve it? Our answer is: social innovation.
Fortunately, the theoretical and practical foundations for this social innovation already exist. Frederic Laloux's book "Reinventing Organizations" introduces a scientific framework to classify different organizational models, with a focus on the emerging "Teal Organization". Hundreds of companies globally are already pioneering in this field, and most of them are tremendously successful.
Outlook
To initiate our blog, we thought of a no better topic than this. The purpose of this blog is to delve deeply into this emerging organizational model known as the Teal Organization. However, the next blog post is about establishing a new narrative about organizations. Whereas most people think of current organizations as a machine, the Teal Organization sees it as an organism.
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