No scout bee, not even one that has encountered a wildly exuberant dancer, will blindly follow another scout’s opinion by dancing for a site she has not inspected. This is critical.

the heart of the bees’ decision-making process is a turbulent debate among groups of scout bees supporting different options (potential nest sites). These groups compete to gain additional members from a pool of scout bees who are not yet committed to a site. Whichever group first attracts a quorum of supporters wins the competition. The winning

First, make sure the group is sufficiently large for the challenge it faces. Second, make sure the group consists of people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives. Third, foster independent exploratory work by the group’s members. And fourth, create a social environment in which the group’s members feel comfortable about proposing solutions.

there is no all-knowing central planner supervising the thousands and thousands of worker bees in a colony. The work of a hive is instead governed collectively by the workers themselves, each one an alert individual making tours of inspection looking for things to do and acting on her own to serve the community.

Each intrepid scout bee works by herself, diligently poking around tree trunks and rock outcrops in search of small, dark openings that might lead to a suitably roomy and protective nest cavity. Whenever a scout chances upon a possible dwelling place, she scrutinizes it and, if it proves acceptable, she returns to the swarm and freely reports her

there are certain things we can do to encourage ourselves to work together.

By operating without a leader, the scout bees of a swarm neatly avoid one of the greatest threats to good decision making by groups: a domineering leader. Such an individual reduces a group’s collective power to uncover a diverse set of possible solutions to a problem, to critically appraise these possibilities, and to winnow out all but the best

democratic group can vastly outperform a despotic individual, since a group’s power to explore for options can greatly surpass that of a lone individual. This is especially true if the group’s members are numerous, diverse, and independent.

In addition to conducting meetings in a nondirective way, the leader should encourage the airing of doubts and disagreements, even ones that are critical of the leader. This fosters the free discussion and careful debate that the group will need to thoroughly evaluate its options.