Ant And Start-ups

I am sure many of us would have come across this saying ; “Man must go back to nature for information.” – Thomas Paine . If not , then today , you would :)…

On my lazy vacation last week , I was observing an ant carry past a load more than what it could. We all know by our basic teachings that ant do have that ability. Read more here for details…

When I casually read through some of the details in the article , i caught following points as striking and emulative…

  • The real strength of an ant, or any insect for that matter, lies in its diminutive size. Generally speaking, the smaller the critter, the stronger it will be. It’s physics, plain and simple.
  • Larger animals have a greater disparity between mass and strength. When a large animal needs to lift an object, its muscles must also move a greater volume, or mass, of its own body.
  • An ant need only lift a small measure of its own weight relative to the strength of its muscles.

If you focus on points which I have mentioned above , you would realize that a visual skeleton starts to sketch in your mind of how large organizations behave today and try to remain nimble every day as compared to start-ups that enjoy characteristics of ant. Organizations traverse through a life-cycle of business and transform themselves from being ants to equivalent of animals that try to manage their own strength against the volume of mass ( equate to business ) they want to move.Being nimble is easier said than done.

What If organizations tried to behave like a community with different tribes(business units) and let the tribes behave more closely as nature manages that relationships…the anthropology would may be more in favor of running many start-ups ( goal oriented units ) within a large corporate structure…?



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About Me

Over 20 years of experience developing software to support multi-million dollar revenue scale and leading global engineering teams. Hands-on leadership in building and mentoring software engineering teams. I love History as a subject and also run regularly long distances to keep myself functional.

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