The Wisdom of Bees: What the Hive Can Teach Business about Leadership, Efficiency, and Growth [Hardcover]

Michael O'Malley Ph.D. (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 13, 2010

"It seemed to me that the bees were working on the very same kinds of problems we are trying to solve. How can large, diverse groups work together harmoniously and productively? Perhaps we could take what the bees do so well and apply it to our institutions."

When Michael O'Malley first took up beekeeping, he thought it would be a nice hobby to share with his ten-year-old son. But as he started to observe these industrious insects, he noticed that they do a lot more than just make honey. Bees not only work together to achieve a common goal but, in the process, create a highly coordinated, efficient, and remarkably productive organization. The hive behaved like a miniature but incredibly successful business.

O'Malley also realized that bees can actually teach managers a lot about how to run their organizations. He identified twenty-five powerful insights, such as:

* Distribute authority: the queen bee delegates relentlessly, and worker bees make daily decisions based on local cues and requirements.
* Keep it simple: bees exchange only relevant information, operate under clear standards, and use straightforward measures and feedback to guide their actions.
* Protect the future: when a lucrative vein of nectar is discovered, the entire colony doesn't rush off to mine it, no matter how enriching the short- term benefits.

Blending practical advice with interesting facts about the hive, The Wisdom of Bees is a useful and entertaining guide for any manager looking to get the most out of his or her organization.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Social psychologist (and avid beekeeper) O'Malley draws management guidance from the hive in this charming rundown of best business practices. It turns out bees work on the same kinds of problems we are trying to solve in our organizations, including the best strategies for managing short-term vs. long-term gains, stability vs. flexibility, individuality vs. community, and similarity vs. change. O'Malley applies lessons learned from those clever bees to strategies to help organizations survive and grow while wasting as little energy and resources as possible, to expand exploration during low-growth periods, to maintain durability over the long run, to keep energy levels up, to provide ongoing feedback, to avoid overengineering, to discover and use an individual's specialized talents, and to be objective and data driven. The advice itself is your standard management-lesson fare, but presented in a concise, conversational format with great personality, practicality, and verve. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Almost every analogy under the sun has been used to promote and explain old and new rules of business, from animals to famous historical personages. Yale University editor, social psychologist, and beekeeper O’Malley parlays all of his competencies into an examination of bee behavior and its application to the world of commerce. Much research informs his 25 lessons of bee-dom. One lesson––“promote community, sanction self-interest”––compares the unity of the hive, where all members, in some way, serve the queen bee is a good rule for the c-suite to remember. Every lesson follows a similar pattern: first, discuss a particular concept of the aviary, then compare it to the for-profit universe, then extract the “shoulds.” Do leaders really need two dozen more principles? Instead, take to heart his four conclusions about the ways honey bees balance: short- versus long-term gains; stability versus flexibility; individuality versus community; similarity versus change. --Barbara Jacobs

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover (May 13, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159184326X
• ISBN-13: 978-1591843269
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 6.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #504,263 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Still chewing on it. May 30, 2013

By Maren LaSallean

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book has a lot of good information that can definitely be used in every level of life from home, children, work and beekeeping. I kind of got bogged down in the weightiness of the information and had to re read a lot but overall it is a useful book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "What they have done has worked for them"...and can work for us as well. September 13, 2011

By Robert Morris HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

I read this book when it was first published more than a year ago and have since purchased several dozen copies to give as gifts to family members and friends as well as to clients who have (you guessed it) serious "people problems" in the workplace. This review is overdue. Others have shared their reasons for hold this book in such high regard. Here are three of mine. First, its author, Michael O'Malley, is exceptionally well-qualified - as a social psychologist, management consultant, executive editor for Yale University Press, and avid beekeeper -- to suggest what lessons can be learned from bees and their culture. He identifies and then discusses 24, devoting a separate chapter to each. They range from "Protect the Future" (#1) to "Create Beautiful, Functional Spaces" (#24). Those who wish to strengthen their leadership and management skills will appreciate the precision and eloquence of O'Malley's observations, insights, and counsel.

I also appreciate how skillfully he anchors each of his key points in an authentic context, the world of bees. He enables his reader to become almost (not quite) as fascinated as he is with "the regularity of their behavior...[The fact that they] live in colonies with overlapping generations and do all the things we do: provide shelter, care for their young, eat, work, and sleep. In addition, they have developed a [production] system that rivals ours in complexity and surpasses it in efficiency." As I worked my way through the lively narrative, O'Malley helped me to understand and appreciate "the wisdom of bees" for reasons that have absolutely nothing and yet - paradoxically --everything to do with its relevance to the human workplace....

Finally, I greatly appreciate the fact that O'Malley immediately establishes and then sustains a direct rapport with his reader. I felt as if I were right there with him as he tended to his own bees while providing a running monologue on what was happening...and why. Then later, sitting on a porch nearby, his monologue continues with a combination of delight, amazement, and appreciation of what the culture of honeybees reveals about "the twists and turns they make in their struggles. What they have done has worked for them"...and can work for us as well. Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Management tools from nature August 23, 2010

By Robert from Washington

Format:Hardcover

As a retired business owner, I found "The Wisdom of Bees" to be an easily absorbed guide to sound business practices. Through his consulting practice and experience as a beekeeper, O'Malley sees the company as a living organism that is constantly adapting to change and renewing itself. His 25 principles of management include some thought-provoking and unusual items such as: protecting the future, building a "flexigid" organizational structure and divesting parts to renew the whole. The value of O'Malley's book is that he focuses on the beehive, the universal symbol of a high activity, high performance environment, and yet he illuminates how the hive really depends on activities designed to promote the health of the overall community. I recommend that business owners and their management teams read this book and take the lessons to heart.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars If Freud had kept bees. . . July 2, 2010

By Jane Stitelman

Format:Hardcover

Too bad Freud wasn't a beekeeper. Rather than a psychological rubric based on sex and aggression, he might have tuned into the urge to maintain the hive. We'd know that Nature only wants us to carry out what we can use; that communication is essential to the species; that even in abundant times, we should be on the look-out for resources; and, most importantly, that our own best interest means sustaining the things that nurture us. I'm grateful to Michael O'Malley for laying all this out in such a readable and entertaining way. It may have been written for managing organizations, but its observations and wisdom also illuminate and inform what's important in our everyday lives.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars A Beehive Isn't a Corporation April 15, 2012

By Michael Smith

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

First off, this book has nothing to offer the would-be beekeeper. In the same category as "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," this is the kind of book a corporate CEO picks up in an airport newsstand, hoping to glean a few gems of inspiration to bolster, perhaps, his or her subordinates. Unfortunately, to reach out to CEO's and managers, the author, a management consultant and beekeeper, presents the hive as analogous to a corporation with the queen bee as a benevolent ruler in charge, who magnanimously delegates authority and keeps the whole operation running smoothly. Alas, a beehive is nothing of the sort to those in the know. Although her pheromones play an organizational role, the queen bee is primarily a specialized, egg-laying machine, laying a thousand or more eggs a day, and she certainly doesn't tell the other bees what to do. In fact, if the the other worker bees feel she isn't satisfactorily fulfilling her task, they'll bump her off and raise up another queen to take her place. Rather than a model for the would-be capitalist, a beehive is more like a communistic cooperative in which each member subordinates themselves for the good of the whole and knows his or her particular task without being given any orders. No one visible to the eye is in charge of this superorganism and there isn't any one bee at the top. If bees have any wisdom to teach humankind, it won't be found by seeing them as something they simply are not. Faulty premises and stretched analogies sink this promising book.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Bees get an A... May 22, 2010

By A reader from the bayous...

Format:Hardcover

This is a terrific book full of good advice. O'Malley, who actually keeps bees, renders a hives-worth of clever and useful insights that are applicable not just to the corporate suite and board room but to every day life. Check out his Wal-Mart analogy as just one good example of the wisdom in the Wisdom of Bees. It makes you wish the bees, who waste not and want not and are mindful and protective of their place in the environment, were running BP or Halliburton. Surely, given the events in the Gulf of Mexico, the world would be a better place.