Leaderless Organizations: Friend or Foe?

I picked up a new book the other day called "The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations" by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom.  (check them out here) I was drawn to this for a few reasons, and in part because one of my favorite professors has done some interesting work in this area.  The book describes the difference between centralized and decentralized organizations.

The most decentralized organizations (such as Wikipedia) have no central "head" or authority and are almost entirely self-managing.  The authors describe quite convincingly how a decentralized organization can be almost unstoppable - like a starfish that regenerates when you cut off one arm. The book uses historical as well as modern examples, and I found that by the time I had finished reading the book I had a better grasp of how to identify these decentralized organizations and some of the pros and cons of this kind of design.

For me, this whole notion of "self-managing" organizations is especially fascinating.  In an organization without "command and control," leadership becomes a shared activity instead of a role.  One person simply starts leading and others follow if they see fit.  Effective leaders are more likely to be followed than those who don't inspire confidence.

It's easy to see how a truly self-managing system flies in the face of what many organizations are trying to create.   The authors contend that industries that become decentralized tend to see drops in profit, and those who tie their livelihoods to business this is decidedly a challenge.  Why buy an encyclopedia when there is Wikipedia?  Why pay for a newspaper ad when you can go to Craigslist?  Why pay for a phone line when you can use Skype for free?  Why indeed?

Organizations die and others are born all the time.  I suspect that with the expansion of leaderless organizations, we'll see an acceleration in the change of entire industry categories.   Is this a threat or an opportunity?  I strongly suspect that it is both.  The world is changing, and that is going to create winners and losers.  Large, centralized organizations with strong monopoly control are likely to be the first to fall down.

I'm no futurist, but I'll be watching this trend closely.  Will you? 

Comments

[bombaydosti]

Only yesterday,I had a discussion with some of my colleagues(they are executives) regarding the utility of managers.With the clause,"dont take it to heart, ok" , one of them told me, "we should not have so many managers". Of course, the environement, that we have is conducive to share these remarks!He even said,that this is a nice factory, that they really dont need an HR manager too!!!
But this did lead to a discussion, of whether shifts can be self managed or not, whether my position was needed or not, whether his own position was needed or not? My organisation,is one which has been very comfortable with this model of having enough and more managers - I would say, we have done well for ourselves, atleast for long years. And there are organisations which have implemented the self management model and done well for themselves as well.

But one conclusion that we reached was that,in case where the number of people managing are lesser, the overheads on other accounts could be higher, i.e. people should have the time and the resources to do a specific job, which means, a lot of administrative and other adhoc tasks must be taken care of by strong systems. If there are a lot of constraints,the lesser number of people, and with "assumed lesser capabilities" may not be able to manage.

But in either case, the involvement of people in decision making is the order of the day. You are right in saying that autocratic control systems may not stay long.

regards
preethi