Tiny Robots and Teamwork

I have been thinking a lot about sci-fi nanobots.

Set aside concerns over what is or is not possible right now in robotics – allow your mind to picture the Star Trek Borg style version – or the tiny bits that make up the Transformers.  Armies of microscopic robots, each good at one thing and together are good at a more sophisticated thing.  Capable of replication and when clipped together like brainy lego, able to build anything from a toaster to a giant tentacled Terminator universe space ship.  In your mind, they probably squeak and buzz like R2-D2 on a sub-atomic level, when communicating with each other.  The kind that you can describe any way you like because they don’t exist.

Picture what I mean? Good.

I have been getting excited about what a modern workplace could look like, if we decided to take a few lessons from the principals applied by nanobots, or rather by the fiction writers and visionary scientists who have dreamt up these robots.

(This is meant to be a fun thought experiment and nothing more – of course I cannot use the fictional behaviour of fictional things to make solid behavioural predictions.  I get that.  Promise.)

What could happen, if we did teamwork, like nanobots?

If we broadly apply the notion – illustrated by recent research into driver concentration and cell phone use – that we work better when we do not multitask, we could start to consider what a truly focused role work-place might look like.  If we each have a unique honed area of specialization that we concentrate on, and everyone was working hard on their piece of the puzzle, could we learn what true team work is and work together to achieve more?

In a toothpick production nano-colony, if I am the bot who is excellent at cutting, I will cut and space and cut and space.  The bot who is excellent at sharpening will take over from there.  Sharpen left, sharpen right. Next.  Sharpen left, sharpen right. Next.  The packing bot will take each toothpick and stack it neatly.

Where we go wrong is picturing robots doing boring repetitive things and someone still having to fetch, carry and reload between them, but with nanobots, co-operation is where the true magic happens.  If we are communicating with each other all the time, I am putting the next stick in your free hand to sharpen while you are passing over your completed sharpened stick to the next guy, not a second too soon, or a second too late.  Passing on the product to the next step is part of my responsibility.  It is seamless, a dance, where everyone understands and anticipates the steps perfectly.

As individuals, we get the first part right.  We want to be excellent so we learn how to do something well. We might not recognise however that unless I am also good at fetching and passing forward, I am not going to be part of a superior value chain, no matter how well I do MY task well.

Fetching is the act of pulling what you need from those who supply you.  Any good machine has built in redundancies, to allow for malfunctions.  It would be better if the item was supplied without my request, but in case it is not, I am ready to pull the item from the place I need to get it from.

Pushing is the act of passing the item on to the next link in the chain.  It would be better if the item was requested without my offer, but in case it is not, I am ready to place it into the hands of those who need it before they even think to ask for it.

Picture the efficiency of a world in which each individual took total responsibility for every push and pull in their sphere of influence.  No excuses, no delays based on what other people should have asked for or provided.

If you don’t like the idea of specialization or focusing on one thing, your imagination might be limited.  Today you can be the sharpener, tomorrow you can be the cutter.  There is no reason why you cannot switch between the roles every minute of every hour if it suited you.  As you switch, others switch too, but while you are the cutter, you take full and complete responsibility for that role, from start to finish.

Enough metaphors, what would that look like in the real world?

We should not be afraid to name our role on a project.  If I am the champion, I name my role and am ready and able to describe the pushes and pulls for which I am responsible.  If I am the seller, I should know what I need to have in front of me to perform the task with perfection.  What do I need to pull in?  What do I need to push out?

It occurs to me, that we know what specialisation and co-operation should look like, which is why we know how to dream up a nanobot colony.  The lessons of the world around us point us in that direction, but we seem unable to apply these principals in our own lives and businesses.  We do not think that human beings are capable of this level of efficiency and output.

I wonder if that might not be true.