Nature’s lessons for human governance

I wrote a piece for illuminem last year about applying the Exponential Governance Mindset (a 5-element framework from my book Governing Pandora) to the emerging and growing field of Biomimetics. You can find the article here.

This year, in preparation for my governance presentation at the annual Biomimetics 2026 conference, it suddenly dawned on me that perhaps I should be asking a different question than the one I asked last year which was – how do we govern biomimetics?

This year I am asking the reverse:

What can 3.8 billion years of lessons from nature teach us – humans of the 21st century – about better leadership, ethical behaviours, stakeholder stewardship, resilience building and strategic foresight?

Last year I focused on the governance of biomimetics. This year I’m focusing on the biomimetics of governance – suggesting the reverse approach: taking our cues from relevant examples from nature and translating and distilling those lessons for us mere human mortals to deploy to do a better job of leading this planet through our deeply turbulent times.

Below I use one illustration from nature to inform each of the 5 elements of the Exponential Governance Mindset – to wit: Leadership, Ethos, Impact, Resilience and Foresight.

Nature informs the 5 elements of the Exponential Governance Mindset

So, let’s get to it and examine an example from nature that might inform better human leadership and governance, ethos and culture, stakeholder impact, resilience building and better strategic foresight.

Element #1 – What nature can teach us about leadership

What is leadership?

This is a definition of what I consider to be “good tech leadership and governance” – adapted for overall good leadership and governance from my book Governing Pandora:

“Successful leadership and governance is about having clarity on the rules of the road, a direct connection to entity mission and vision, freedom from material conflicts of interest, and a holistic, all-of-entity approach to integrating frontline governance into overall governance. The idea of successful governance applies to any and every type of entity – for profit, nonprofit, governmental, and so on. The crux of successful governance is whether an entity is governed consciously and proactively or is ignored, neglected, or discombobulated...The reality of 360 governance is about a synchronous, integrated governance culture from the top down, from the bottom up, and radiating from the middle out.”

Adapted from: Bonime-Blanc, Andrea. Governing Pandora: Leading in the Age of Generative AI and Exponential Technology. Georgetown University Press 2026.

The case of the honeybee swarm

In his book, Honeybee Democracy (Princeton University Press 2010), Thomas Seeley describes an unusual and unusually effective form of democratic decision-making within the honeybee swarm – one that shows that the Queen (the ostensible “leader”) does not really lead but instead a form of decentralised empowerment reigns the swarm.

In their world, the swarm makes every major decision. For example, choosing a new home (which can be a life or death decision) – where hundreds of scout bees take the lead to scope things out and only when the scouts reach a quorum about the new site quality do the rest of the swarm follow.

What can we learn from honeybees about leadership?

Seeley specifically draws lessons for humans from his decades of studying the honeybee swarms – among them:

• Decisionmakers should share common interests and be mutually respectful
• A leader’s influence should be minimised so it doesn’t distort the decision-making
• Leaders and decisionmakers should not only tolerate but encourage open, even adversarial debate
• A diversity of options is necessary before a decision can be made via a quorum, not a top-down mandated decision

Element #2 – What nature can teach us about ethos

What is ethos?

Once again adapted from a more tech-centric definition from Governing Pandora – here are some thoughts about what “Ethos” means:

Ethos is what leaders create, nurture, enable, and disseminate within their organisations – consciously and unconsciously – and the resulting “great, good, bad, or ugly” tenor of their culture. Understanding how leaders use, integrate, and/or deploy technology and exponential technology within their organisations reveals a lot about their overall organisational culture and ethos. Are leaders fostering a healthy, retaliation-free, speak-up, follow-up, and problem-solving culture that puts responsibility, safety, and ethics first? An entity’s internal culture also has both direct and indirect consequences for its reputation risk and/or opportunity for both internal and external stakeholders.

The case of the vampire bats

Yes, believe it or not, I have a Halloween themed example from nature that can teach us humans a few lessons. It’s the case of the vampire bat. According to Gerald Wilkinson (in his article “Reciprocal food sharing in the vampire bat,” Nature 308, 1984), when in times of hardship, it is unable to feed on mammalian blood for 2–3 nights, other bats that have fed will regurgitate blood to those who haven’t fed sufficiently. While the author clearly concludes that this isn’t an act of charity, this behaviour tracks both the idea of kinship and the opportunity to be repaid in kind in the future – something that those who are rescued remember. Further studies have shown that sharing beyond the kinship group, expands that group thereby growing and deepening long-term social bonds.

What can we learn from vampire bats about ethos?

Clearly, there are humans that practice these general principles as well – caring for community, for the less fortunate, fostering a culture of responsibility and care of others. The vampire bat example offers a few lessons for organisational / corporate culture:

• Team members and especially team leaders should pay attention to the welfare and wellbeing of team members
• That includes nurturing a safe to speak up culture for those affected by downturns, concerns or challenges
• In an environment that is free from retaliation for speaking up and that builds on reciprocity
• Expanding the ecosystem of care for team members to other close stakeholders (contractors, customers, third parties) may well serve to expand a good culture and make it great

Element #3 – What can nature teach us about stakeholder impact?

What is stakeholder impact?

Once again adapted from Governing Pandora:

Impact is about the importance of leaders and decisionmakers identifying, understanding and integrating key stakeholders and their primary interests into an organisation’s life cycle – from invention or acquisition to usage and deployment. To do this, we need to understand who our key tech stakeholders are. Concurrently, we also need to understand what their key issues and expectations are – whether economic, environmental, social, technological, or governance.

The case of the Yellowstone wolfpack

The example of the Yellowstone wolfpack gives us some clues of how important and how mutually dependent, interdependent and impactful we are on the ecosystem and stakeholders surrounding us.

In their Biological Conservation article examining the interdependency of the reintroduced wolfpack in Yellowstone Park titled “Trophic Cascades in Yellowstone: The first 15 years after wolf reintroduction,” authors William Ripple and Robert Beschta show that after the reintroduction of the wolfpack in that park after a 70-year absence something called the “trophic cascade” took place. Even though wolves weren’t numerous at any given time they had a disproportionate ecological impact on their environment – meaning that other key life forms in the park changed accordingly. For example, as elk numbers declined and where they grazed changed (because of the wolfpack hunting them), trees and vegetation along the rivers grew back which in turn attracted other animals like beavers, songbirds and fish to repopulated river areas in the park.

What can we learn from the Yellowstone Park wolfpack about stakeholder impact?

There are a few lessons from this example:

• The most powerful beings in a particular ecosystem can usually have a disproportionate impact on others and thereby have a greater responsibility
• As such, companies with powerful products and services (technology, healthcare, food, etc.) need to understand who their most important stakeholders are and what the impact of their products and services might be
• Moreover, they need to understand the expectations of the stakeholders about those products and services and integrate such stakeholders “into the loop”
• If they don’t, they may suffer reputational damage; but if they do, they might experience reputational upside.

Element #4 – What can nature teach us about resilience?

What is resilience?

Again, here is a description adapted from my book Governing Pandora:

Resilience in the Age of Pandora means understanding that because we live in a “polyrisk” and “polycrisis” world, we need to be as prepared as possible to survive and thrive through it all...resilience is about focusing on developing the personal and organisational resilience – polyrisk and polycrisis preparedness – that is needed in this age of rapid and often-dangerous challenge and change. It means that leaders must be continuously prepared for what is next and have the necessary tools to learn, mitigate, and/or deal with downsides while fully taking advantage of upsides. It is a process of continuous learning.

The case of the ant colony

In Ants at Work (1999; Gordon Lab, Stanford), the author Deborah Gordon makes the case that the ant colony builds long lasting resilience based on two critical factors: a system of distributed authority and good information sharing. Focused on the life of the harvester ant, the author shows how the colony operates seamlessly without central authority and with no specific ant directing another. Instead, each ant is built in such a way that it can reliably forage, build, defend and reallocate its own labour keyed to changing conditions around it. It’s as if these ants had a refined sense of situational awareness giving them the ability to adapt and pivot independently as needed. And it does so via the exchange of relevant information not hierarchy or command and control.

What can we learn from the ant colony about resilience?

There are several significant lessons the ant colony can teach humans about resilience:

• Building resilience is a structural exercise – setting relevant and adaptable rules and architecture in advance of the crisis
• Resilience should be based on a system of situational awareness that is built on seamless and accurate information flows
• Central command and control is less effective than distributed decision-making
• With such a structure in place, effective decision-making can be accelerated during a crisis, and more effective decisions can be made under pressure

Element #5 – What can nature teach us about foresight?

What is foresight?

Once again, here is a description from Governing Pandora:

Unleashing a future-forward strategy involves having a seamlessly integrated set of practices including having a keen sense of situational awareness; engaging in systems thinking as relevant to the ecosystems that are relevant; gathering accurate risk and opportunity intelligence; and finally, engaging in interdisciplinary scenario planning exercises.

The case of the elephant matriarch

What can be said about the strategic foresight of the elephant matriarch? According to two scientific sources consulted (McComb et al., “Matriarchs as repositories of social knowledge in African elephants,” Science, 2001; Foley, Pettorelli & Foley, “Severe drought and calf survival in elephants,” Biology Letters, 2008), elephant matriarchs have truly evolved intelligence that deploys experience from its and its herd’s history (think about the expression “having an elephant’s memory”) to chart new courses and alternative paths. They demonstrate the value of leaders with long tenure and experience sometimes being a most valuable player when it comes to strategic foresight and moves. In one of these studies, the older matriarchs (over 55 years old) were found to be deeply discerning about separating friend from foe – they had the social knowledge to discern that younger matriarchs did not. These social cues translated into greater survival for the baby elephants in the herd – a strategic asset if there ever was one.

What can we learn from elephants about foresight?

There are some impressive lessons human leaders can learn from the elephant matriarch:

• The elephant matriarch shows the value of listening to those with deep historical experience and insight
• Social and historical knowledge are key to developing proper foresight and making informed strategic decisions
• Strategic foresight benefits from both those with experience and knowledge as well as those with new ideas and outside of the box thinking
• Strategic foresight is borne from good stewardship which also helps with both crisis and opportunity management

Five actionable biomimetic-inspired governance takeaways

My final overall takeaways of things you can do today to apply nature’s lessons to your organisational governance are the following:

#5 – When it comes to foresight – have an elephant’s memory

Act like a Matriarch Elephant leading forward – plan ahead using history and situational awareness as your guide.

#4 – When it comes to resilience – care about your ecosystem like an ant colony

Build your resilience practices & structures to constantly adapt to changing times

#3 – When it comes to impact – influence like a Yellowstone wolf pack

Consider your direct & indirect stakeholders, your influence & their expectations

#2 – When it comes to ethos – share like a vampire bat

Acting with integrity, care and ethics for those in your ecosystem is central to surviving and thriving

#1 – When it comes to leadership – adopt a honeybee swarm's 360 governance

Adapt and evolve your leadership style from command & control to more of an adaptable, pivotable, mutually respectful and well informed governance 360 where all participate meaningfully in decision-making – top down, bottom up and middle out.

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