Foundation Stone #37 - Attack Problems in Small Chunks
We all know that we cannot eat a water melon in one mouthful but to break them into pieces, remove the seeds and skin and then share and eat the fruit. Similarly the work we do might look complex, big and not solvable from the onset. I was watching a Discovery channel program on Siafu ants (pinching ants) which is a common ant type in 
Africa. These ants would eat everything in sight that moved. They eat mice, scorpions, spiders, anything that comes on their way and the local people say even elephants sometimes. They would kill and eat dogs and cats if they were trapped in the house also. The warrior ants have big claws that can tear off the outer skin of the victim and the rest of the ants swarm in and tear the soft inner flesh. These march in thousands and thousands and are nomads that shift the colony once in two weeks. Here is the best part, these ants are totally blind. They rely on touch, smell and chemical signals from the abdomen of the leading ants. The swarms can travel at up to 20 metres per hour, stripping all animal life in their path.
Think about the collaboration, team work and best of all the strategy of attacking in pieces but in huge numbers. The victim is outnumbered and is soon captivated. The whole episode was mind boggling just like watching a thriller movie. I could not take my eyes off the whole hour. The commercials did give me time to think about the lesson learnt through these ants and I thought this is an analogy I can share with you. Working as a team with good communication and collaboration and applying the divide and conquer rule can help in tackling huge problems so easy that you would want more.
Note - This post is a part of foundation stone series of posts
