Evolution excels at getting rid of waste.

Yet as Rory Sutherland puts it in Alchemy, “When signalling their enthusiasm for a potential nesting site, bees waggle about in an exponential relationship to its quality.” (Emphasis added.)

As it turns out, the waggle dancers have two jobs. First, they are supposed to venture beyond the “efficiency zone” to find new resources. Their second job, when they return to the hive, is to share what they have learned.

At first glance, this looks illogical. Why would a waggle dancer expend more energy than necesary? In reality, this isn’t waste; evolution has selected for this behavior because that additional expenditure of energy is a highly effective form of signalling. The extravagant (“exponential”) expenditure of energy is a way for the bee to say, “Hey, I found something that can help us survive and maybe even thrive. And I wouldn’t waste so much energy telling you about this if I didn’t think it were a big deal.”

What can schools learn from nature’s elegant design?

1. Make sure some of your teachers are waggle dancers (experimenters, innovators).

2. Make sure your system enables waggle dancers to share what they are learning (bring insight and practices from the edges to the center).

3. Create a ritual (“waggle dance”) around that sharing to infuse meaning in the gathering itself and to infuse purpose in what comes next (spreading of the new behavior).

Who are your waggle dancers? How do you enable them to share what they are learning?

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