Some of the best wisdom for management problem solving is found in nature which after all was created by the wisest being that exists.

For some, this might sound like an impractical way to deal with workplace problems. The truth is however that the natural world is full of breakthrough solutions. Innovative problem solving occurs in nature all of the time!

For any manager who is willing to think outside the box, these solutions are easily transferable to the workplace. Nature provides solutions on how to conduct orientation and onboarding for your new employees, how to train and gradually delegate work, and how to assess when to move on from a failed situation.

Here’s three examples of how to apply nature’s innovation to your workplace:

New Employee Orientation/Onboarding

Managers often struggle with how best to orient new team members about the culture and operational processes for an organization. Elephant families have an effective approach for solving this issue.

Elephants have a team approach to orienting baby elephants. Since elephant packs are generally all related, a mother elephant will share child rearing responsibilities with others in the group. While the mother has primary responsibility for her offspring, responsible aunts help in the process as well.  A baby elephant in fact interacts with the entire family and is quickly acclimated to family dynamics.

Delegation

Sometimes it’s difficult for managers to turn over responsibilities to their team members. Mother leopards have a practical approach for solving this problem.

Mother leopards use an incremental process to move their juvenile cubs to assume responsibility for their own success. They delegate this task to their juvenile cubs by gradually no longer bringing home prey for the juveniles to eat.

This gradual withdrawal from doing everything for their juvenile cubs forces the cubs to leave the tree and get a place of their own. After a few missed meals, the juvenile leopards get the message that if they want to eat they will need to use the skills their mothers taught them to get their own dinner.

Change Transition/Decison Making

Managers often struggle with knowing when it is best to move on from something that has outlived its usefulness. Herd animals, like wildebeests, know how to separate irrational sentimental reasoning from efficient decision making. Nature has equipped them with the ability to accurately assess their situation, “cut their losses,” and move on.

By accurately assessing their place in their current environment and its changing dynamics, wildebeests have for centuries preserved their species. Using data available to them, they assess when it is no longer viable to remain in an environment that is no longer productive and supporting their needs. When they recognize that they have exhausted the potential benefits of their current situation, they move on to another place that will serve their needs.

Herd animals accept change and recognize when they have to move on from their current location to better pastures.

Conclusion

So, how does this apply to you and your team of employees?

If you lead or manage a team, you can use analogies from nature to achieve innovative solutions to workplace problems. 

First, correctly define your problem. What is it that you are trying to solve? Why is it a problem?

Second, after you define your problem, look to the natural world for a similar situation. Assess how nature handles this situation and see how you might apply nature’s method to your workplace situation.

Finally, as needed, you can get help from your employees to help you think through how to apply nature’s solutions in the workplace.

The advantage of using nature as a tool for breakthrough solutions is that nature provides simple solutions that everyone can understand.  Nature’s lessons are not complex and they work!

The next time you face a difficult problem, look to nature and see how your problem exists there. Once you find your situation, analyze how nature has solved it and then extend nature’s solution to your own workplace situation. As you do this, you can achieve your own breakthrough solution.

*See Three Change Management Lessons From the Dodo Bird for another lesson from nature!