Make notes of the following passage by using headings and sub headings: Bees. Ants. Reindeer. Not the usual topic of conversation at an average board meeting. But if Peter Miller's debut book Smart…

Make notes of the following passage by using headings and sub-headings: Bees. Ants. Reindeer. Not the usual topic of conversation at an average board meeting. But if Peter Miller's debut book Smart Swarm is anything to go by, the creatures could just about revolutionise the way we do business. In the latest in a series of management books that challenge leaders to think differently, Smart Swarm explores the habits, actions and instincts of animals and how they can be applied to business. The book is set to become the next most talked about in management circles after Miller, a senior editor at National Geographic magazine, wrote an article on the subject a few years back, which was read by 30 million people globally. It follows a string of 'business thinking' books that have hit the shelves in recent years, all searching for new answers on how to run organisations effectively. Obliquity, published in March, told us that the most profitable companies are not the most aggressive in chasing profits. Wikinomics, a bestseller, demonstrated new models of production based on community and collaboration. Miller believes his book is the first time anyone has laid out the science behind these management theories. 'The biology of how ant colonies or bee hives work are appealing models for organisations and systems that can be applied in a business context,' he says. So how exactly can bees help run board meetings? Because of the way bees work independently before they work together, Miller explains. Picture a huge bee hive hanging on the branch of a tree, with something like 5,000 bees vying for space and protection. They know their hive is getting too numerous and leaving them vulnerable. They must find a new home - and fast - but in a way that everyone agrees to. In today's business environment, managers need to be able to make the right decisions under huge amounts of pressure. Yet the fallout from the financial crisis proves that, actually, some of our best-paid leaders in some of the biggest banks in the world got it dramatically wrong, leading to the collapse of an entire industry. How is it that a group of Wall Street executives failed to make efficient business decisions when a swarm of bees can make a critical decision in just a few seconds? According to Miller, 'swarm theory' can help managers in three simple steps: discover, test and evaluate. The bees first realise they have a problem. They then fly into the neighbourhood to find potential new sites. They come back and perform a 'dance' to get other bees to follow them. Eventually, the bees with the best dance attract the most votes and a decision is made. Back to the board meeting. Managers that encourage debate, and then have a ballot over which idea is the best, stand a better chance of getting it right, Miller says. 'The bee example tells you that you need to seek out diversity in your team. You need to have a way of gathering up very different approaches and ideas so you can make sure you pick the right one." Ants, on the other hand, can help businesses organise workflow and people. In an ant colony, there is no leader. Ants are self-organised, and respond to their environment and each other. One ant on its own could not raid a kitchen cupboard, but one ant telling the next one that it's worth following him to find food ends up creating a supply chain. 'In an ant colony, you get the right number going in and searching for food; you get the right number taking care of the babies, Miller says. 'As a manager, this tells you your hierarchy, your bureaucracy, is getting in the way of getting work done.' The airline industry has also flirted with the idea that ants can make flying stress-free. Southwest Airlines, an American, low-cost airline, was concerned its 30-year-old policy of letting customers choose where they sit once they boarded a plane - as Ryanair and Easyjet in the UK do was slowing down the process. By creating a computer simulation of people loading onto a plane, based on what ants would do, the company was able to show that assigned seating would only be faster by a few minutes. It was not worth scrapping their first-come, first-served policy, which was a key part of the company's brand, but they instead began to assign seats on check-in. Other animal examples in the book include reindeer, who can act together as a single herd, and schools of fish, which can coordinate their movements so precisely to change direction in the flash of a second. Miller says: 'If you are concerned about surviving the next business cycle, in other words, giving your company the resilience and ability to bounce back from challenges that you can't anticipate, then nature is a great model."