Starfish or Spider Church? Part I
Thanks to an idea from folks at Presbymergent, I’ll be putting up a series of posts this week on Brafman and Beckstrom’s The Spider and the Starfish: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations moving towards an assessment of the PC(USA) as a starfish or a spider. Part 1 follows…
Book Overview:
A blurb on Starfish’s cover reads, “The Starfish and the Spider is one of those delightful business books that transcends the genre.” I wholeheartedly agree. In a quick 232 pages, Brafman and Beckstrom develop a way of looking at systems that explains both the resilience of the Apache Indian tribe and the 
unparalleled success of Wikipedia. They do so with humor and with clarity, claiming that starfish-shaped organizations will continue to lead our society’s big movements, and predicting dismal straights for spiders.
Why all this talk of pointy-limbed creatures? They serve as the book’s main metaphors for success and failure. Think of a spider. Cut off a leg, it survives but is hindered. Cut off a few more, it will die. Cut off a spider’s head and it will die immediately. The shape and qualities of a spider describe many hierarchical organizations with a top-down approach to leadership, a specialized approach to legs (divisions), and a unified understanding of the organization–we all sink or swim together.
A starfish is another animal entirely. A few years ago, the Great Barrier Reef was suffering an explosion of the starfish population, so much so that they began to destroy the coral. So a group of divers, in an attempt to save the reef, made a series of dives on which they collected starfish and cut them into half, leaving them to die. What these divers did not realize is that starfish do not die when cut into pieces: each piece grows into another healthy starfish! A starfish shaped organization is decentralized. Like Alcoholics Anonymous, or Wikipedia, or the internet, or the Apache tribe, or Skype, or eBay–or even in a hybrid form, like Toyota (not General Motors), or a decentralized organization with an aware and listening leader, starfish organizations have non-centralized characteristics.
Brafman and Beckstrom, analyzing multiple starfish organizations, proceed to describe the characteristics. For example, to become successful, starfish organizations often have a catalyst figure whose “tools” are genuine interest in others, a penchant for networking, and high emotional intelligence. Spider organizations require CEO types who must be bossy, rational, powerful, directive, and ordering. Starfish catalysts, though, use peer relationships, trust, inspiration, collaboration, and enjoy ambiguity.
The book concludes with ruminations on “hybrid organizations” that have leaders, but whose leaders his “the sweet spot” involving listening, openness to change, and enough decentralization that allows for creativity.
Check back in a few days for more on the Starfish and the Spider as it relates to the church universal and the PC(USA) specifically.
Update: Part II of the series examining the PC(USA) and the book’s descriptions is here.
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I tend to think they should have said “starfish” vs. “little cuddly bunny.” I mean, why use an arachnid that gives conniptions to phobics for your organizational metaphor when you can have a widdle cuddly bunny instead? All the same principles apply.
Haven’t read the book, but it seems to me they are missing a huge problem in their analogy. In the world, starfish have no brain. They cannot move quickly to adjust to changing conditions. They live if they are cut apart, but all they do is eat and reproduce. Not much inspiring there. Animals with a brain and a hierarchial organization can more easily adjust. Let’s take just one example: human beings. No we cannot survive if our heads are cut off (star fish don’t have heads), but if we lose our legs, we can make prosthetic legs. Just a thought. Looking forward to Part II.
Thanks, Joan. I think they’d say you’re actually identifying spider issues not starfish ones. The authors would argue that it’s not that starfish orgs have no brain, but that their brains are spread out in many different areas. The curious part is that the ideas can come from any leg, not just the top. They argue that this makes starfish orgs move much more quickly and adapt more easily because their legs have different the folks/skills rather than just specialized ones.
Think of a special ops team for the army — not their example, but it works. A good team is made up of folks w/ different skills rather than all gunners or radio folks or whatever. That way they can adapt quickly, because many skills are present.
All that said, they do explain the importance of “catalysts” — maybe that brain drive you’re searching for. Not every org needs a catalyst, and catalysts aren’t necessarily good leaders, but they can help get things off the ground.
Got to run. More later.
Oh, btw, that’s hilarious, David.
Oh, I understand. My point was just that their analogy was bad; not that the idea is bad. Starfish have no brains in their legs. So, if they are analogizing to something with brains spread out, they just picked the wrong animal. (Actually I can’t think of an appropriate animal.) I’m just picking nits