Starfish organizations have the ability to replicate themselves at every level of organization. If you were to cut off one of the five legs of a starfish, it would simply grow a new one or, in some cases, a whole new starfish would develop from the severed arm. This forms the basic paradigm of leaderless organizations.
I believe the church was meant to be like this. With Christ as the Head and orgnaizing principle, the church was meant to be a growing movement seeping into society and affecting positive change within the culture it finds itself.
Brafman and Beckstrom have a chapter in their book called The Five Legs. This really inspired me to realize how we need to build the new SOULNET. In this chapter, they describe the 5 "leg" upon which a decentralized organization stands. You can take away a couple of the legs and the organization can still function. But when all 5 are on, the leaderless network becomes unstoppable. These kinds of organization have the following:
1. CIRCLES - All decentralized organizations have circles to which people belong. Circles are powerful because they provide the sense of identity and the experience of participation. Unlike leader led group, there are no rules for a circle but there are "norms." These are key behaviors that the group has agreed upon as normative for the circle. As it implies, circles are not led by any one person. Rather, circles are "led" by the protocols embedded in the movement's ideology. The churches in the Primal Church worked in this way.
2. A CATALYST - These people get things started. But they quickly back off so that the group can lead itself. The catalyst is key at the very beginning because he/she sets the norms of the orginal circle. Apostle functioned in this way.
3. IDEOLOGY - This is the "why" that drives the group. This "why" drives the "what" and the "how" of the entire movement. When this is crystal clear, there will be no need for leaders. Interestingly, this is the hardest part of what we're doing at this time.
4. PREEXISTING NETWORK - Movements and leaderless organization don't start from nothing. They mazimize existing networks, building momementum, and grow in numbers and influence. Thisn is akin to what Jesus told his disciiples to look for in Luke 10, the Man of Peace. This person is open to the disciples and to the ideology and mission of Christ and opens up their relational network to the group.
5. CHAMPIONS - These are people who are burning with the message and ideology of the group. They are relentless spokepersons for the orgnaization. They live and breathe the movement.
3 comments:
The five legs are pretty interesting. Do you have any first hand experience you'd like to share about these?
We've been working with this framework unintentionally with our church in Manila. And this is the framework that I'm working with for our ministry here in Ottawa.
We were actually talking about the
'starfish' concept in theory class at school yesterday. Although they called it the 'pumpkin patch' or 'risome' or 'network' vs the 'tree'. and how more organizations are turning to that these days to save from being prematurely killed should a chain of command be broken.. it's just interesting that I'm starting to see it in other areas of study, too.
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