What Business Leaders Can Learn from Honeybees

How to scale — and protect what’s most important

Mike Michalowicz (Author of Profit First)
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Credit: Natali_Mis/iStock/Getty

HHow do you start the process of making your business more efficient? I started looking for solutions for my business four years ago with a simple question: What is the most efficient organization in the world? That is what we all aspire to have — an efficient organization that generates money on automatic, which in turn gives us the freedom to do what we want, when we want. My Google result? Squatola.

Then, one fateful day, during a long drive, I flipped through radio stations and came across the most random report about bees. An NPR field reporter was out there with a beekeeper, reporting on how these insects do the amazing work they do. And, in typical NPR fashion, they shared some of the live action, including a sting that the reporter took when he got a tad too close to the hive.

As I listened, what impressed me most about bee colonies was their ability to scale extremely fast and nearly effortlessly. You may have seen it for yourself. A bee buzzes around outside your window one day, and what seems like the next day, you spot a massive hive there. How do bees do it?

Each bee in the colony knows it needs to do just two things, in the same order, every time. First, each bee must ensure that the queen bee is…

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