"Follow the Leader, or Think Like a Starfish?"

Read the full interview of Rod Beckstrom by Elizabeth Williamson in the Washington Post, January 1, 2007.

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom was published in 2006. Its authors apparently cite three techniques for combating a decentralized competitor: drive change in your competitors' ideology, force them to become centralized or decentralize yourself.

In the interview, Beckstrom says:

The most important thing for us to remember is that decentralized terrorist networks are driven by ideology. Ideologies are not only the glue that binds them; they coalesce a social energy. One of the most important ideology factories in the world are schools.

As a nation we have not engaged in supporting good education across the Middle East. That is probably the most important thing we can contribute to . . . increase employment, promote more critical analysis and reasoning among the population, and to teach what we might consider modern social values.

In this blog, I have noted that we must think about organizational learning differently than we think about the learning of individuals. Organizations can improve their responses to external challenges by changing the way they make decisions, bringing knowledge within the organization more effectively or more quickly to bear in critical decision making situations. The starfish model of decentralized decision making can be more effective than the spider model of central decision making because of this fact. Networks of decentralized decision makers can respond faster and more effectively to decentralized threats.

I suggest, however, that Beckstrom's comment also emphasizes the importance of social capital. Improving education and understanding among people approaches not the organization to deal with threats that may arise, but with the external environment from which they arise. If people are not likely to decide to commit terrorist acts, than the government does not face so large a threat of such acts. While an organization can learn by building organizational capital, a society can learn by building social capital.