The Hive Mind at Work

Harnessing the Power of Group Intelligence to Create Meaningful and Lasting Change

Siobhan McHale

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2024
• ISBN:
  9781400246236
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Workplace Culture
• Index: Business

Learn a new model for understanding how organizations really operate and implement changes that get real results.

With so many forces of change buffeting the business world today, a scary state of flux has replaced any sense of certainty, stability, and familiarity, delivering a wake-up call to make crucial changes happen, make them happen quickly, and make them stick. Traditional approaches to change management fall into one of two categories: Organizations function like machines, where managers pull change levers to "fix" problems with an engineer's mindset (IQ). Or People form social networks wherein individual "influencers" make change happen by developing effective interpersonal relationships (EQ). Neither of these models offer a full picture to what really happens in an organization.

In this groundbreaking new book, change expert Siobhan McHale offers a third option: organizations are complex ecosystems that require a Hive Mind or Group Intelligence (GQ) to bring about meaningful and lasting change. We can learn a lot of lessons from how bees operate:

• Hard work: An individual bee spends its entire 40-day life span gathering food for the hive.
• Teamwork: Inside each teeming beehive an entire community works collectively to achieve shared goals.
• Role clarity: Every bee has a specific job, with the queen, drones, and worker bees faithfully playing their part.
• Resilience: Bees can overcome daunting challenges, including all the parasites, pathogens, pesticides, and climate fluctuations from Maine to Miami and beyond.

See how a hive mindset solves many of the common problems all businesses struggle with today!

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Prologue: Bees Do It and So Do We
• 1: Exploring the Hive’s Wisdom: Harness Group Intelligence in the Service of Change
• 2: Simplifying Complexity: Map the Basic Patterns That Govern Behavior
• 3: Creating a Compelling Case for Change: Complete the Essential Groundwork
• 4: Testing New Flight Patterns: Experiment Before Rolling Out the Change
• 5: Making the Critical Change Decisions: Tap into the Wisdom of the Hive
• 6: Emerging Hive-Wide Leadership: Avoid the Three Critical Mistakes Bees Never Make
• 7: Nudging the Hive Forward: Overcoming Obstacles and Objections
• 8: Reaching Critical Mass: Create a Powerful Swarm
• 9: Aligning Technology and Processes: Install the Right Hive Infrastructure
• 10: Making the Change Stick: Prepare for Distractions and Surprises
• Conclusion: The Evolving Hive
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author