What Fortune 500 CEOs can learn from an AT&T engineer who began beekeeping

Bees are pollinators and help produce up to at least one in three bites of food for humans. Honey bees achieve this through a definite dominance structure wherein the queen determines the characteristics and culture of her hive, but correctly relies on the recommendation of an older generation of employee bees – she acts as a board of directors that guides the rank and file members of the colony.

Beekeeping distills the important thing tools it’s good to manage innovation cycles: how you can support growth to recent levels of scale, how you can leverage team strengths and development, and the importance of creating a culture of enthusiasm. But perhaps more unexpectedly than anything, you will learn to not focus an excessive amount of on the honey, but as a substitute to focus totally on constructing the perfect bee box.

The box is your organization

Why is the box the North Star? Why not the honey? Well, in case you only think concerning the honey and do not provide for future crops and talent pools, the hive would don’t have any food reserves and will suffer massive churn. If you do not increase the scale of the box when it’s about 80% full, half of your bees will leave it and begin a brand new hive because they think the job is finished. If you make it too big, they’ll exhaust themselves. We learn six essential lessons about innovation once we prioritize the box over the honey.

• Promote and develop talent: When your talent has mastered 80% of their role, consider promoting them and letting another person take over their old role. They have shown that they’ll reach your organization. And You need to make it clear that your environment is providing ongoing insights. Bees naturally wish to swarm. That’s how they grow. But amazingly, once the nectar starts, the bees don’t swarm. That’s because they’ve a very hard job they usually’re totally focused on it.

• Framework for achievement: Better-equipped bees find higher honey. We know that bees will construct extra comb in any space larger than 3/8 of an inch. They may even fill any space smaller than 1/4 of an inch with propolis (their antifungal hive constructing material). That’s why we keep their “bee spaces” between 3/8 of an inch and 1/4 of an inch. In an organization, your innovators need space to refine their role, but additionally they need clear responsibilities and goals – even when the goals are fluid.

• Focus on continuous learning: A bee’s strengths change over time. They excel at making wax until they’re about eight weeks old, after which they move on to recent tasks. Bees are quick learners and might tackle multiple roles of their lifetime, from nurse and guard work to foraging. Each of those roles is significant, and bees advance through these positions as they age. The lesson? Managers should consider these changing strengths when assigning roles and pay attention to when employees are ready for advancement.

• Focus on creating lasting value: Just as specializing in the honey can keep you from considering long-term concerning the hive, overemphasis on current products can hinder breakthrough innovation. For example, solving web load problems in 1994 led to high-speed web and the smartphone revolution. If we had focused an excessive amount of on the advantages of Wi-Fi alone (the present honey), we might have missed the necessity for seamless connectivity between Wi-Fi, cellular, and satellite networks. This convergence led to the event of fiber optic technology, which is now the backbone of high-performance communications networks. An entrepreneurial mindset is critical here. We invent the long run once we push the boundaries of the current and challenge the established order. Everyone’s efforts should align with the broader goals of the organization and be focused on creating lasting value.

• Always have a backup beekeeper: Consistency is essential when checking your hive. I do that every few weeks. Always keep a backup beekeeper (or department head) to make sure stable management, because innovation requires a continuous and regular hand. While the queen leads, the department heads, very similar to the older employee bees, are vital to leadership. When launching a brand new innovation, these older staff play a critical role in two phases. First, they test your idea, assessing its potential, economics, supply chain support, infrastructure needs, schedule, operational impact, and skill to alter lives. Once the thought passes this assessment, these leaders are essential to mobilizing the team and driving implementation of the innovation.

• Promote a culture of enthusiasm: When bees bring nectar back to the hive, they need to sell it to the opposite bees. The attention their nectar gets will depend on the passion with which they present it. Your team should feel secure to innovate, to act boldly, and to shout, “I have an idea!” even when it seems to be flawed. In an incubation environment, there needs to be no fear of “false news”—just buzzing bees focused on driving innovation that contributes to shared success. This means fostering a culture where everyone is happy about their daring ideas, and where taking smart risks and failing fast are part of a bigger strategy geared toward creating long-term value and sustainability. This goes beyond the “fail early” mentality; sometimes a very breakthrough idea needs extra space to develop. The key’s to create an environment where the reply is “how could we do this better if we did it again?” moderately than causing embarrassment.

As with many things in life, focusing an excessive amount of on the immediate goal (treasure) doesn’t result in long-term success. Instead, sound architecture and mindful system-level management will produce lasting results.

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