so about nine months ago I was in the
jungles of India with about 16 other
young students and every morning for
three weeks we would wake up we would
call out of our tents we’d pull on our
leech socks and we’d go trekking into
the bush for hours and hours in search
of insects it was a field course in
entomology which is the study of insects
and one of the main things we were
graded on over the three weeks was the
many experiments we conducted so
basically we had to go out into the bush
find some cool insect related phenomenon
tamper with it a little and then record
our observations so today I’m going to
tell you about one of the many
experiments I conducted which turned out
to be way cooler and way more valuable
as a story than I ever expected it to be
so these are Weaver ants I called Weaver
ants because they build their nests out
of leaves sometimes it’s one leaf folded
in half
sometimes it’s many leaves you know
pulled together they form these long
chains made of many small individual
ants holding on to each other and they
pull the leaves together and once
they’re touching they sew them in place
fix them using silk produced by their
larvae
now this is one Weaver ant nest that we
found just off the trail that’s the
trail and you can see that it’s just
it’s one big leaf it’s been folded in
half along the central stem it’s sort of
like a taco on its side and one of the
guys I was with he saw this and he
immediately pulled out his knife and he
sliced through the silk threads that run
along the left side between the two
edges that were holding the leaf in
place in half and it immediately flopped
open and the ants went completely
bananas and we got to see their repair
process and I went something like this
they formed those chains I was talking
about they started at the base of the
leaf near the stem and they slowly
pulled the two edges together and once
they were touching other ants were
delicated just holding things in place
temporarily sort of like stitches one
place to every centimeter or so here’s a
picture of them sort of halfway through
the job you can see they’re moving from
one end to the other sort of like the
zipping zipping something up and once
the two edges were touching other
workers came out holding the larva in
there
animals now the larvae produced the silk
right so they would sort of like dab the
larvae onto one side and then go around
to the other side drawing the silk
between the two edges going back and
forth back and forth until the whole
thing was sewn up and it was really cool
and we were really excited and we went
home that night absolutely thrilled
because we had seen these incredible
little creatures problem solving problem
solving problem solving problem solving
the more the more I said it the less it
seemed to fit right and the reason is
that every single one of the behaviors I
just showed you forming chains pulling
things together sewing it up all of that
is exactly the same things the ants
would do when building the nest from
scratch right it was a repeat it wasn’t
certainly wasn’t a unique behavior and
that’s what I wanted to see but of
course if you want to see a unique
behavior you probably have to give them
a unique problem so I went back the next
day I borrowed that guy’s knife and I
cut an irregular shaped hole in the top
of their nest this is about two and a
half by one and a half inches and
funnily enough the first thing they
tried is that same old strategy form
chains pull it together
sew it up except of course here that’s
not gonna work right though they did try
they tried for like 40 45 minutes just
trying to get the two together but of
course they didn’t and eventually the
hole was empty and they gave up so what
happened next
all right well all of this is going on
there are ants milling around the
surface of the leaf top and bottom many
of those ants wander down the stem on to
the main plant and of those ants three
of them wandered on to the neighboring
leaf where I had left the cut out piece
now the first ant walked up to the piece
and sort of bit into it
and just sort of started chewing it
second walked over it and it was just
her screwing around and the third one
walked right up to the leaf sunk her
mandibles into it and immediately
started tugging in the direction of the
nest right and after only a few seconds
the other two immediately started
helping and after a few more seconds
there was like five or six ants carrying
this leaf piece back towards their nest
you can probably see where this is going
they fit
into the hole they rotated it a few
times because remember it’s an irregular
piece it only fits in perfectly one way
and they patched it up and yeah and we
can only imagine that workers went along
the bottom with larvae in their mouths
sewing things in place so that’s really
cool but I’m not just telling you this
story because it’s a cool one I’m also
telling it to you because I think it’s a
really valuable one there’s a really
neat lesson here about group
problem-solving and I’d like to share
with you in humans when it comes to
group problem-solving we often think of
people as blowing to one of two groups I
think there are people who produce ideas
and there are people who implement ideas
people who produce ideas being sort of
creative types think outside the box go
wandering off from the nest find an
amazing solution and drag it back people
who implement ideas maybe they don’t
come up with the craziest stuff but once
an idea has been found they work really
hard tirelessly to put it in place right
they’re persistent they’re organized
they’re efficient they rotate the leaf a
few times and then sew it up and it’s
easy to see those two roles in the in
the story I’ve just told you but the
more I thought about it the more he
looked at it the more I realized that
there was a distinct third role being
played here a role that was just as
essential to this sweet solution as the
other two and those are the ants the two
ants that saw what the third was doing
when it started tugging away at that
leaf and decided to help the ants that
seemed to recognize a good idea when
they saw one let me show you what I’m
talking about when we get together and
you know when we sit down and we start
trying to come up with solutions to a
problem the first thing we do always is
come up with a bunch of ideas a bunch of
ideas of varying quality right now
before we can pick one of those ideas
and start working to implement it
someone has to wade through that pile
and sort the good from the bad
someone has to be able to recognize the
good ideas when they see them now this
is easy when the ideas are red and green
light bulbs but you know they’re not
they’re not always red and green light
bulbs in the real world sometimes ideas
are mixtures of good and bad they’re a
bit more complicated than that
and so in this case you know we have to
analyze each element of each idea try
and predict how that element would
perform in the future if it was part of
our solution and then try and judge
whether that’s good enough and in doing
so construct an idea and this is the
third role that I’m talking about this
middle step now if you had to describe
what attributes required to do well in
this role I don’t think you’d call it
creativity because you know that’s more
needed on the left side that’s needed
when you’re producing ideas and I don’t
think you’d call it just sheer work
ethic either because that’s more needed
over here when you’re implementing idea
an idea if I had to use one word to
describe it I think I’d call it judgment
because it takes judgment to look at
something in the moment and try and
predict how well it would work out in
the future right like cards against
humanity’ sometimes you look at a card
and you think this is brilliant and you
play it and it’s not
it’s not always super easy and I’m not
I’m not talking about the sort of
judgement you’d find in a cold courtroom
right not not condemning heavy judiciary
judgment just more so the judgment you
would find in a really wise leader or a
smart investor my favorite example of
this kind of thinking is grocery store
checkout lines because this is a
situation which we all use judgment
right it’s rush hour at Loblaws which
line do you choose now I think everyone
looks at how long each line is and I
think most of us will also look at how
many items each person has within the
lines but you can go a lot deeper into
the judgement of grocery store checkout
queues you know for example you could
look at the types of items people have
because it takes longer to checkout
produce than it does a bag of chips
right because the clerk has to weigh it
and I typed in the code and down and
then weigh it no it’s rolling away we’re
typing the code and that takes extra
time and you can go a step deeper than
that even and you can say well what kind
of produce do they have because if it’s
something rare or seasonal you know like
Jerusalem artichokes check up clerk
isn’t gonna remember that right they’re
gonna have to pull out their little
booklet and and find the code or they’re
gonna ask their friend you Janet what’s
the code for Jerusalem artichokes and
type it in all right and then wait and
this is all time time that’s tick tick
ticking away and it seems ridiculous to
go so deep into the judgment of grocery
store checkout lines but you know
imagine instead of 10 checkout lines
it’s 10 options for how to market your
business yeah you’re a student you’re
writing an essay 10 options for your
opening sentence that’s big day at work
someone you want to impress 10 options
for your outfit all right this is every
day from the biggest problems in our
lives to the smallest ones we use
judgment to plan out our actions and yet
when it goes wrong when we fail what do
we blame we blame the work ethic say I
was lazy shoulda worked harder or we
blame the original idea I it wasn’t
saucy enough I should have been more
creative I should have come up with more
things but we seldom blamed the judgment
we seldom blame this huge process in the
middle that lies between ideas
and actions the process of revision
refinery analysis analysis at the
Jerusalem artichoke level because that’s
what’s behind that’s what’s behind good
judgment and that’s that’s the lesson
that I learned from the ants story and I
hope that’s the one that you remember
about it not the insects or secretly
geniuses because I don’t think we can
really say that it’s pretty
circumstantial and I did leave the
perfect piece right beside their nest
but rather you know it’s a reminder that
there’s a difference between finding an
idea and choosing an idea and that
difference is often I think the
difference between a successful outcome
and a mediocre one we spend so much time
as a society talking about the
importance of creativity can you come up
with good ideas right ingenuity
originality novelty but we seldom talk
about everything that happens after that
ideas don’t come out of us perfect and
even if they do it isn’t always easy to
recognize that they’re perfect we seldom
talk about judgment and I think we should Thanks