I must admit, I was quite fascinated by my daughters’ recent issue of National Geographic Magazine and the article on Swarm Theory. In it, the writer discusses how an ant colony can solve problems unthinkable for individual ants, such as finding the shortest path to the best food source, allocating workers to different tasks, or defending a territory from neighbors.
As individuals, ants might be tiny dummies, but as colonies they respond quickly and effectively to their environment. They do it with something called swarm intelligence. Where this intelligence comes from raises a fundamental question in nature: How do the simple actions of individuals add up to the complex behavior of a group? How do hundreds of honeybees make a critical decision about their hive if many of them disagree? What enables a school of herring to coordinate its movements so precisely it can change direction in a flash, like a single, silvery organism?
The collective abilities of such animals—none of which grasps the big picture, but each of which contributes to the group’s success—seem miraculous even to the biologists who know them best. One key to an ant colony, for example, is that no one’s in charge.
No generals command ant warriors.
No managers boss ant workers. 
The queen plays no role except to lay eggs.
This really made ponder my role as a credit union leader.
Does my team, does management…anywhere at all utilize any form of swarm theory to run their credit union?
