Did ants invent the perfect system for communicating via mobile technology?

Posted on 17 February 2008

Category: Collaboration

by Ken Thompson

Ants interact using a system known as pheromones, which involves sending 'chemical messages' to their community through smell and taste. This is one of the oldest and most evolved forms of group communication on the planet and has many features that today's mobile and virtual teams could benefit from.

This type of 'pheromone messaging' is just one aspect of bioteaming - an exciting new field of research into how we can transfer communication mechanisms from nature into our own teams, groups, communities and social networks.

Bioteaming introduced

Bioteaming is about building organisational teams, which operate on the basis of the principles that underpin nature's most successful teams. These teams range from single-cell organisms and social insects to forests and ecosystems.

Research has identified a small number of characteristics from nature's bioteams, which don't tend to be present in human organisational teams. The top three include:

• Pheromone Messaging - Instant whole-group broadcast communications.
• Collective Leadership - Any group member can take the lead.
• Group Ecosystems - Small is beautiful …..and big is powerful.

In this article, I'll explore the first of these characteristics of bioteaming: Pheromone Messaging.

What is pheromone messaging?

When you mention the word 'pheromone' at a dinner party, most people will think you're referring to a mysterious perfume that makes you irresistible to the opposite sex. But human sexual attraction is just one small aspect of what pheromones are about.

Smell is the oldest of the natural senses; it's the most evolved and it forms the basis of most biological signalling systems. For example, if you walk round the dinosaur exhibit at The Natural History Museum in London, you'll learn that dinosaurs had a refined sense of smell, which they used when hunting prey. Comparing the part of the brain associated with smell in a Tyrannosaurus Rex with a human brain is like comparing an orange to a pea!

The dominant position of smell in the natural world means that pheromone messaging is used by almost every animal or insect, no matter their size or the environment they live in.

Borrowing communication systems from nature

Animals and insects have honed their communication activity with members of their 'group' or species, using pheromone messaging. Therefore we must ask ourselves, are there any lessons we can learn from pheromone communication in the biological world and if so, how can we apply these to make our own communication channels more productive and agile?

Let's begin by examining the characteristics of pheromone communication and their practical applications for group communication in the digital era.

1. Broadcast and individual

Pheromones are used to broadcast information to large groups, but they can also be used to communicate between individuals.

Practical Application: Within a trusted group, we can be more transparent by broadcasting to the whole group (one-to-many) or communicating with a single individual (one-to-one) and avoiding, where possible, subgroup (one-to-some) communications. An excess of sub-group communication within a large group causes cliques and resentment.

2. One-way

Pheromone messages do not require a reply.

Practical Application: Use of two-way messaging can seriously slow a team down as people wait for everyone in the group to respond. This is the best way to destroy team or group productivity. Teams should use one-way messaging as a default and two-way only on exception.

3. Whole species

Pheromone messaging is available to all members of the species - however, different groups within a species may have different messages they send and 'listen' for.

Practical Application: All members of the group should have full and equal messaging rights, including the ability to communicate with the entire group. This is often restricted due to concerns about spamming and misuse. A new mindset is required here. If this facility is abused, it can be corrected using 'reputation management' systems where the spammer loses digital reputation.

4. Simple vocabulary

Pheromone messages are based on simple, stimulus-response templates and contain no complex information.

Practical Application: Try to put the essence of your message into a short amount of characters (100-200) or use a set of abbreviated messages, such as 'Feedback', 'Vote', 'Alert' or 'Question'.

That way, people only need to read the message header before they can action it. This is also convenient for sending messages by SMS and IM. We spend far too much time writing detailed messages and even worse, sending attachments, which our co-workers often don't read - especially if they are mobile.

5. Robust delivery

There are two main aspects to this. 'Flow Round' - where messages can flow round an obstacle in their path (unlike visual messaging) and "Darkness Transmission", where the messages can be transmitted and received at night.

Practical Application: Can you create a multi-channel capability (e.g. email, IM, SMS…) for your communications, ensuring robust delivery of messages in difficult and noisy environments.

6. Low energy

Energy is required when the sender generates a message. Because of the minuscule amounts of chemical compounds that are expended, pheromones are a low-energy alternative to, say, sending an acoustic message, such as a cricket chirruping. They also cost very little energy to receive.

Practical Application: How can you transmit your messages in the simplest possible way? Even more importantly, make your messages easy to reply to/ forward (minimum clicks), particularly for people using mobile devices.

7. Longevity potential

Unlike acoustic or visual messages, pheromones have the potential for persistence as the chemicals can be available in the environment for an extended period.

Practical Application: Make sure there a place where all of your groups' communication gets stored, aggregated, archived and is available for all users to analyse. The danger of sending lots of short messages, such as SMS or IM, is that they get lost and are not integrated with the team's email and other communications. The archived messages of a group are a wonderful source of information on the effectiveness of their social networks.

8. Multi-channel

Pheromones are used in combination with other messages for two main reasons. The first reason is 'over-communication' via more than one channel is used to ensure the message gets through.

The second reason is when the pheromone only contains part of the message and the other part is transmitted over another channel. To fully understand the message the receiver needs to read both channels.

Practical Application: Like Robust Delivery, you should be able to specify a number of communication channels for each message including email, SMS, and IM.

9. Quick and slow responses

There are two types of pheromone messages - 'releaser' messages, which release an immediate effect in the receiver, and 'primer' messages, which prime the receiver to commence a longer-term response such as the production of sperm.

Practical Application: You need a way to indicate what type of message you have just sent as well as a 'reminder system' to ensure the longer-term messages are not forgotten. This addresses the classic dilemma of what is important/not-urgent, and it ensures tasks are always completed.

10. Location information

Pheromone messaging can be used to lay trails and can therefore be used to convey location information. For example, a new food source or prey.

Practical Application: You should think about how you might use location information in messages, such as finding the nearest team member, via the growing capabilities of location-based services facilities, offered by mobile devices.

Incorporating pheromone messaging into our day-to-day lives

Whether we like it or not, most of us will find that an increasing number of our electronic interactions - at work and socially - take place on mobile devices, such as smart phones, blackberries and PDAs, while we're on the move.

For most of us, this is a relatively new model of communication, which brings both opportunities and problems. For example, the personal nature of these devices ensures a much higher chance of reaching, and getting a reply from, the receiver in real-time, which is a great potential benefit. On the other hand, there is the potential for constant interruption and misinterpretation of receiving many short messages.

The good news is that we do not need to invent a new communication model from scratch. The ants (and other of nature's bioteams) have got there before us with pheromone messaging, which is ideal for on-the-move communication with groups, using short-message devices.

Most of the principles of pheromone messaging introduced here can be easily incorporated into our business and social group communications, by relatively simple changes in our behaviour and modest reconfiguration of our existing communication technologies.

About Bioteaming

NESTA Connect will soon be launching a new project to explore how bioteam communication could be used by UK music bands within their fan communities. Find out more.

For further information on bioteaming see www.bioteams.com.

About the Author

Ken Thompson, based in Belfast, is an expert on team dynamics and virtual collaboration. Under the pen-name of The BumbleBee, Ken is the creator of the influential Bioteams Blog, which explores the numerous ways humans teams and groups can take advantage of the mechanisms used in natures best teams including ants, bees, geese, dolphins, wolves and songbirds.

Ken wrote The Bioteaming manifesto in partnership with Robin Good and has a new book coming out in January, called Mobile Teams: The bioteaming breakthrough.