• Hi, I’m Brad Abare

  I'm a make-it-happen guy working with big idea people. I design teams and orchestrate strategy so that great ideas I believe in get done.
  
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One of the first books I read on my Kindle was the The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafmanand and Rod A. Beckstrom. It’s “a book about what happens when there’s no one in charge. It’s about what happens when there’s no hierarchy.”

The metaphor of a starfish and spider is spot on. Spiders can only operate when the central system (the head) is alive and intact. If you cut off the head of a spider, or cripple its legs, it will die or be destroyed. Starfish, on the other hand, do not have a centralized command system. If you cut off one of the “arms” they will either grow back or learn to function without it. There is not a head to a Starfish, rather an interdependent decentralized system that adapts and mutates.

Using this metaphor, the authors explore centralized and decentralized systems throughout history. They pay special attention to decentralized systems—including Alcoholics Anonymous, eBay, Kazaa and eMule—since the point of their book is the rise in power of powerless (or leaderless) organizations. “The absence of structure, leadership, and formal organization, once considered a weakness, has become a major asset.”

I was especially intrigued by their example of tribes throughout history, in particular the Aztecs and the Apaches. The Aztecs were a centralized organization with a clear chain of command. Their demise came when invading enemies learned that the best way to beat them would be to topple their power structure. Without a clear line of leadership and communication, the Aztecs were defenseless.

On the other hand, the Apaches were nearly invincible in this regard because they had no centralized system. Enemies would attempt the same kill the leadership approach but would soon find out that there was no such system in place. The Apaches actually became stronger in the midst of adversity because they knew that their strength lied in their ability to morph and mutate, and would rise up to defend the tribe at any cost.

The authors are wise to point out the current “war on terror.” America’s approach has been to find the head of terror and kill it, but no such head exists. The more we go after the terrorists, the more the decentralized system of terror continues to morph and mutate into something even more terrifying. When a decentralized organization is attacked, say the authors, it “tends to become even more open and decentralized.”

“An open system doesn’t have central intelligence; the intelligence is spread throughout the system.” What’s more, decentralized organizations can sneak up on you and they “need ambiguity to survive.” Look out!

It appears that the only way to kill or beat out a decentralized organization is to have property or money enter the equation. Once that is involved, decentralized systems quickly seek out centralization to protect individual interests and assets. This was the case with the Apaches. Once the unstoppable decentralized force, their demise came when the enemy stopped looking for the head and instead gave them cows.

Cows were in short supply to Apaches so as soon as individual Apaches started claiming and protecting their cows, demise became inevitable because they destroyed themselves from within. The power of consumerism never ceases to amaze me!

The book was a decent read although a bit repetitive at times. It seemed to me that the best scenario for an organization was a hybrid of centralization and decentralization. The authors used eBay as an example. On one hand eBay is powered by the people and built on a platform of mutual trust to exchange goods. On the other, eBay is a centralized organization that provides servers and payment structure (eBay owns PayPal).

Nonetheless, this has certainly spurred my thinking with some of the organizations and projects I am involved in. Good stuff.

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