This was the audiobook version. Reader was fine - it's just non-fiction so even Dick Estell couldn't ruin it.
I picked this up when another book by theThis was the audiobook version. Reader was fine - it's just non-fiction so even Dick Estell couldn't ruin it.
I picked this up when another book by the author which was recommended to me (by Goodreads) was not available. The starfish/spider metaphor is a bit overdone, but we get the picture. A starfish organization is not particularly "organized" in the sense we think. It's more organic. Most organizations are spiders - they have a head and are run from the top down. Cut off the head and you have a dead spider. Replace it with another head and you aren't talking about spiders anymore, you're talking about corporations. But they don't go into that. The examples Brafman uses are the Aztecs and the Inca as spider organizations. Kill Moctezuma and ... well, it doesn't really work. Actually, you had to lay siege to Tenochtilan and then you've defeated the Aztec. Brafman made it sound like Cortez just waltzed in, demanded gold, and killed Moctezuma. I think it was a little more than that. On the starfish side are the Apache. Starfish have no head. In fact, you can cut bits off and they either grow back, or for every bit you cut off you get a new starfish. The Apache did not rely on a single ruler who had to dictate what everyone was doing. And when their villages were destroyed, they just went nomadic and kept attacking, first the Spanish and then eventually the settlers. Brafman equates this with al-Qaeda. It's not run top-down, so killing/capturing a leader only makes more independent groups. The way to deal with these "starfish" is to change their ideology. They gave cattle to the Apache. Presto! Suddenly someone needs to have more cattle than someone else and then suddenly that person is in charge and we have a spider. Other more contemporary examples are given, like the file-sharing that has destroyed the music industry. Brafman also talks about catalysts: people who inspire and then back off and let the movement run itself. Examples are Alcoholics Anonymous (until they started making too much money and went all spider) and the animal rights movement. This doesn't have anything to do with the metaphor though. Oh, the examples are interesting: GM versus Toyota, e-Bay, PayPal, Craig's List, etc. He shows how corporations can be more successful by adopting some bottom-up management but also how some businesses need top-down management, which finally gets us back to the starfish/spider metaphor after that catalyst digression. I am reminded of how our erstwhile director had the minions gather together to hash out how to deal with the problem of books getting back on the shelves without being checked in. Now, we weren't given any tools to work with - no one else had ever been in this sort of confab - so the retired military guy (also the only man in the room, it being typical library staff) took over, quelling my post-it note process, and in the end he suggested we just needed to be more diligent and took that to the director who said, literally, "The obvious solution was all checking in and out to be done at one location. I don't understand how you didn't see that." And that's what we did. So, instead of two places in the library where checking in and out happened, there was only one and that took a burden off the Children's Room, so I wasn't all that miffed. Still, the culture here is very top-down. ...more
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