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 Sunday, March 16, 2003
The challenge of converting leaders. Tom Munnecke comments on Dee Hock's letter to Joi, recalling his earlier work with Hock. He raises what I think is a very sensible idea: it is very difficult to turn people who have worked their way to leadership positions within the context of command-and-control systems into leader-followers. I presume the reason for this is that it amounts to effecting a huge personality/identity shift. Quoting Tom (emphasis mine):
About 200 folks were there, representing a wide range of stakeholders. I soon realized that these were the very people we needed to disintermediate. Asking them to "streamline" themselves and jumping off the gravy train was not going to happen.
And Hock himself hints that he recognizes this in his letter when he writes this optimistic (but inspiring) passage about routing around gravy trains:
I wonder if you realize that a dozen or two people like yourself with the right combination of communication, technological and organizational skills could design and implement a global government without the consent of any present form of organization and provide it with the neural network to insure its success.
Reading this helped me pin down precisely what makes me uneasy about David and Doc's World of Ends piece. They're trying to do exactly that, make current executives and the ilk streamline themselves, instead of targeting, giving hope to, and helping organize those who have little to lose. I suspect that the attitude shift that David and Doc are hoping for is only going to materialize once this groundwork alternative organization effort is well underway and pretty much everybody has woken up and smelled the coffee.
Look at the inertia of the music industry for an illustration. [Seb's Open Research]
This is part of a very important discussion. How many people does it take to make a difference? In the last century, it required 1000s of followers behind a committed leader. Companies needed to get big to survive. But today, a much smaller group can use the tools of the 21st Century to make effective change. How many does it take? I think that 10s of people can do it, effecting a Tipping Point that moves thousands, without an apparent leader. I think we shall begin to see if things have changed that much and just how many it takes to really change things. 10:06:47 PM 
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Social Network Analysis. Steven Johnson (author of Emergence) writes about new software which analyses the informal groups that permeate our personal and work lives. The beginning is fascinating: In his classic novel Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut explains how the world is divided into two types of social organizations: the karass and the granfalloon. A karass is a spontaneously forming group, joined by unpredictable links, that actually gets stuff done? as Vonnegut describes it, "a team that do[es] God's Will without ever discovering what they are doing." A granfalloon, on the other hand, is a "false karass," a bureaucratic structure that looks like a... [E M E R G I C . o r g]
Immunex used to be a karass but it seems that Amgen is more of a granfalloon. SIze may have something to do with it. 9:45:33 PM
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Neil Gaiman. has advice for Americans: I have very mixed feelings about Americans disliking the French. I'm English, after all. We have... [Electrolite]
Very funny rebuttal by an Englishman. They've disliked the French a lot longer than we have an know a lot more about dissing them. 7:48:35 PM
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"ABC13.com: Brawl erupts after song played at rodeo" [Daypop Top 40]
Now, I dislike having to hear God Bless America durting baseball games. I wish it was America the Beautiful. Much better song. But Proud to Be an American is not in the same class as either of them. Of course, a fight at a rodeo is not to unusual. 7:24:16 PM
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