Key lessons from bees every business owner should follow

“Our sales are not growing; it's stagnant for the last few years.”

“I am doing everything I can; still, our profit is not increasing” 

“I am really busy with my tasks at the company, couldn’t get time to the things I wanted to do” 

These are a few common complaints shared by a few business owners when we visited them last week. As I had more discussions with more business owners, I realized that this is a challenge faced by most of them. 

There is an interesting solution for this dilemma faced by business owners in nature - the honey bee hives. One of the most remarkable features of bee colonies is their ability to scale extremely fast and nearly effortlessly. We all might have seen this ourselves - a bee buzzes around outside the window one day, and within a couple of days, there is a massive hive. How do bees do it? Honey bee hives are one of the best examples of focus, growth, efficiency, and teamwork. We can learn many important lessons from honey bees to apply them to our business for ensuring its profitability and growth.

Identify your 'QBR' and protect it:

Every hive revolves around its queen bee, whose role is to lay eggs. In the book titled ‘Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself,’ author Mike Michalowicz calls this Queen Bee Role - QBR. If the queen is performing its duties very well, eggs are laid and the colony is positioned to grow quickly and easily. If the queen bee is not fulfilling her role of laying eggs, the entire hive is in jeopardy.

“Don’t confuse the queen bee as being the most important part of a colony; it is the role she serves that is most important. Eggs need to be made quickly and continually. One specific queen or another is not critical; the QBR is what is critical.” Says Mike, “I realized that declaring and serving the QBR would radically improve any entrepreneur’s business and quality of life.” 

So the question to ask is: What is your QBR - your Queen Bee Role activity- that ensures the growth and profitability of your business?  What is the one activity, that if you do daily, will increase the revenue of your business, and will ensure the consistent inflow of profitable sales and sustainable growth in the long run? Your QBR should be this single most critical activity that ensures the success of your business, just as laying eggs is the QBR for bee colonies.

Once you identify the QBR, the next question should be: “How much time are you spending on the QBR in a 40-hour week?” Take an inventory of how you spend your time and calculate how much percentage is spent on QBR.

The surprising fact is that majority of the business owners spend most of their time in non-QBR activities, which doesn’t add much value to their businesses. They roughly spent less than 10% of their time in QBR. This should be reversed. Following the 80-20 principle, we shall aim to focus 80% of our working time on QBR activities. Other tasks should be properly delegated and assigned to other team members, and employees or even outsource. 

The QBR must be protected and followed well at all costs. You shall make your team aware of just how critical the QBR is for the success of our business. As business owners, your sole focus shall be on doing the QBR work. This should be your ‘20 Mile March’ as we discussed before.

Once the QBR is taken care of, then comes the next key lesson from bees - teamwork. 

Teamwork and Autonomy:

Every bee is focused on producing honey to the exact quality standards of the hive. Each bee looks at the big picture, understands where it fits in the picture, and ensures it contributes to attaining this objective.

No role is greater than the other, each is critical. Each bee understands that what they do is important for the growth and survival of the hive. Each bee might have different roles and each of them makes individual contributions. But the common good is the goal, and all their tasks are synchronized. They all feel that what they do matters in the success of their hive.

The bees in a hive follow ‘autonomous decision making.’ The decisions do not depend on one person. Autonomy is allowed throughout the hive. This is a very important element to be followed in the team culture. 

By our default human nature, people thrive on autonomy. The leader shall provide direction by defining the “what” and “why” for the team members. They shall determine how. Engaged employees thrive on autonomy within a set of boundaries. People prefer to be given a set of parameters within which to operate and then be left alone to make the decisions necessary to implement. This will ensure the team members are growing on their own and the organization is always moving forward.

So, the question to ask here is: is each member of your team aware of their role and its importance in the success of your organization? Are they crystal clear about their duties and responsibilities, and tasks they have to do in order to achieve your organization’s goal?

Like each bee has a purpose for being there and each knows what it is, each one of our team members shall know their roles and should feel their importance in the success of our organization. This team culture is very critical for the success of any organization. And as a leader, you should be able to protect, empower and inspire your team.

This brings us to the next most important lesson from bees: simple and proper communication.

Simple and Proper communication:

Every bee is well aware of their roles and they fulfill them very well. When an emergency or uncommon situations come, they are very well coordinated and come together to protect their hive. All hives have bees responsible for different jobs and each bee knows and understands what the other is supposed to do. This kind of proper coordination and teamwork is achieved by the simple and proper communication mechanism employed in hives. They communicate quickly and efficiently. 

The messages passed on by leaders should be simple and easy to understand – well that is the starting point. Fast, efficient communication that is crystal clear is not only motivating and constructive but ensures the team is focused.  The more people are on board to achieve the goals, the easier it will be to accomplish. 

We shouldn’t limit Communication as a once a month or once-a-week event. It must be continuous and all of the time. Then only the proper team culture will be built and all the team members will get aligned with it.

So what are the action steps you are going to implement in your business, to ensure it will grow extremely fast and effortlessly? Share your comments below.

(Author is a Business Consultant and Startup Specialist at AK & Partners Auditors and Chartered Accountants. AK & Partners is one of the leading audit firms in Qatar. Please send your comments and suggestions to habeeb@akauditors.com)