The Starfish and the Spider - The unstoppable power of leaderless organizations

[durabone]

"The Starfish and the Spider"

"The unstoppable power of leaderless organizations"

by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom

Anyone read it? Cover story:

The book argues that organizations fall into two categories: traditional "spiders," which have rigid hierarchy and top-down leadership, and revolutionary "starfish," which rely on the power of peer relationships.

Explores battles between these types of organizations:

- The power of a simple circle.
- The importance of catalysts who have an uncanny ability to bring people together.
- How the internet had become a breeding ground for leaderless organizations.

Given what we have heard about hierarchies and STS I find it interesting that such a book exists! Could be a good read!

P

 

[Buddy]

Given what we have heard about hierarchies and STS I find it interesting that such a book exists! Could be a good read!

P

I haven't read it, but here's some "About the Book" if anyone is interested:
_http://www.starfishandspider.com/index.php?title=About_the_Book

Interesting. "The Starfish and the Spider" seems to be a re-conceptualization of "Decentralization" in the relevant contexts. A person might even recognize the GNU/Linux project as an example of it:

[quote author=http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=12813.msg92176#msg92176]
Consider that the GNU/Linux operating system, and all the applications that run on it, is freely available with all source code, without cost, and has been constructed by volunteer software engineers/programmers from all over the world, collaberating over the internet - many in the form of a co-operative human jelled team and without any management whatsoever. GNU/Linux is the main operating system used by serious academic science sites and Internet Service Providers.
Now consider the slime mold: unicellular organism with multiple nuclei.
Slime molds spend much of their time living as collections of single celled organisms. They wander around their territories, finding food like any other amoebas do. Then suddenly, when conditions become difficult, huge numbers of these little organisms start to get co-operative and congregate in one place. They zoom up the ladder of evolution, and literally start climbing on top of each other. As they do so their cells blend into each other (although each cell's nucleus remains distinct), and the collection of similar individuals, each freely following its own amoeba desires, forms a single plant-like organism!
_http://catalogue-of-organisms.blogspot.com/2008/09/diversity-of-slime-moulds.html
_http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/01/those-amazing-s.html
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold
_http://www.gnu.org/
[/quote]

Concerning the concept of "human jelled teams" that represent decentralized, yet coordinated activities:

From: DeMarco and Lister, in "Peopleware":

Once a team begins to jell, the probability of success goes up dramatically. The team can become almost unstoppable, a juggernaut for success. Managing these juggernaut teams is a real pleasure. You spend most of your time just getting obstacles out of their way, clearing the path so that bystanders don't get trampled underfoot. "Here they come, folks. Stand back and hold onto your hats." They don't need to be managed in the traditional sense, and they certainly don't need to be motivated.

DeMarco, Tom & Lister, Timothy
Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
Dorset House
ISBN 0-932633-05-6

Thanks for the post. This idea may just be visited more and more often in the coming months and years due to economic conditions. :)