[Editor’s Note: If you’re just joining us, we are in the middle of reading through “The Starfish and the Spider” by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom. Each Monday and Thursday I’ll summarize a few important principles from a chapter in the book. Each Tuesday and Friday, I’ll apply those principles to the starfish-shaped church I believe the Lord is building in the Earth.]

The second chapter of the Starfish and the Spider introduces us to the book’s two main analogies: The spider and the starfish. These two animals will represent throughout the book to vary different approaches to organization. The spider represents a very centralized, controlled network. The starfish will represent a decentralized organization. This chapter will serve to highlight how you determine the difference.

Before we jump into spiders and starfish, there’s an amusing story at the beginning of the chapter worth highlighting: The President of the Internet. Dave Garrison was a newly hired CEO of an internet service provider (think AOL) named Netcom. Dave’s job as CEO was to pitch his company and recruit new investors. Remember in 1995 the internet was barely known about, let alone understood.

In one particular visit, Dave was in France explaining the concept of the Internet to a group of French investors. The conversation stalled when a question was posed: “Who is the President of the Internet?” This wasn’t an illegitimate question at the time. It was troublesome to invest money into an entity that had no system of accountability. We all know now that there is no president of the Internet, but at the time, the Internet was a risky gamble.  Who would make decisions? Who would be held accountable? The investors assumed that the question kept getting lost in translation. Dave, on the other hand, knew better. After going around and around on the question, he finally gave up: “I am the president of the Internet.”

The story highlights a difficult problem when talking about Starfish and Spiders. Often it feels like we are living in a world full of centralized organizations. The world runs on a system of accountability and hierarchy, so much so that it can be difficult to spot a decentralized organization when you see it. The French investors mistook a starfish organization for a spider.

Within the book, Spiders represent centralized organizations. They may look like starfish in that there are legs that extend from a body, but that’s where the similarities end. The big difference between the spider and the starfish is the spider has a head. Cut off or crush the spider’s head and the spider dies, end of story.

Starfish on the other hand have what’s called a “distributed neural network.” There is literally no head nor is there a brain. You can’t behead a starfish. In fact, quite the opposite. Many types of starfish can be cut into pieces and the pieces can completely regrow into their own separate starfish.

The rest of the chapter spends time exploring the difference between these two types of organizations and there’s plenty that could be included. But for today, I want to sum up with a list of questions that Brafman and Beckstrom give us to understand whether we’re dealing with a starfish or spider organization:

Is there a person in charge? (Yes = Spider, No = Starfish)

Are there headquarters? (Yes = Spider, No = Starfish)

If you thump it on the head, will it die? (Yes = Spider, No = Starfish)

Is there a clear division of roles? (Yes = Spider, No = Starfish)

If you take out a unit, is the organization harmed? (Yes = Spider, No = Starfish)

Are knowledge and power concentrated or distributed? (Concentrate = Spider, Distributed =Starfish)

Is the organization flexible or rigid? (Rigid = Spider, Flexible = Starfish)

Can you count the employees or participants? (Yes = Spider, No = Starfish)

Are working groups funded by the organization or are they self-funding? (Funded = Spider, Self Funding = Starfish)

Do working groups communicate directly or through intermediaries? (Intermediaries = Spider, Directly = Starfish)

The important thing to remember is that no organization will typically answer all of these questions with the corresponding starfish or spider answer. There is a continuum where organizations fall. They do tend to be “more like a starfish” or “more like a spider” but it’s rare to be all spider or all starfish.

What does this mean for the church? We’ll look at that tomorrow…

Other Entries in this Series Include:

The Starfish and the Spider: Introduction

The Starfish and the Spider: Introduction II

The Starfish and the Spider: On Napster and Apache Leadership

The Starfish and the Spider: P2P Networks and Spiritual Nant’ans

[Editor’s Note: If you’re just joining us, we are in the middle of reading through “The Starfish and the Spider” by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom. Each Monday and Thursday I’ll summarize a few important principles from a chapter in the book. Each Tuesday and Friday, I’ll apply those principles to the starfish-shaped church I believe the Lord is building in the Earth.]

The first chapter “MGM’s mistake and the Apache Mystery” starts off the book describing a problem that started to plague the music industry around the turn of the century. Tired of paying for music and having to drive down the street to pick up the next movie, enterprising technologists began to develop peer to peer (P2P) sites that allowed users to trade music and movie files.  This essentially allowed people acquire music or watch movies for free and it began to hit production companies hard. Compared to a company like MGM, these P2P sites were small potatoes, but they were responsible for a 25% loss of revenue to the recording industry.

So what did MGM and its other corporate counterparts do? They decided to sue. And they sued big time, taking their cases all the way up to the Supreme Court. They hired the best attorneys to pursue not just those who were pirating the music, but also the sites that were allowing the pirates to trade music between each other. The goal was to stop the practice altogether, but a curious thing happened–the more MGM won cases against the thieves and the P2P sites that operated on them, the more widespread the problem became.

Why? Brafman and Beckstrom find the answer in the history of the Spanish conquistadors. Hernando Cortez was sent to Mexico to acquire land and resources. When he came to Tenochtitlan, he met with the Emporer, killed him, and took over the Aztec nation.  A similar conquest of the Inca’s was enacted several years later by Francisco Pizaro. This continued until 1680’s when the Spanish headed north and encountered the Apaches. Upon reaching the much-less-civilized-looking Apaches, the conquest of the continent stopped and remained at a stand still for hundreds of years.

The secret, according to Tom Nevins, an anthropologist who has lived among the Apaches, was the way in which their community was formed. Instead of a centralized government where power is held by very few people, the Apaches were lead by Nant’an. These were social and spiritual leaders who led by example. No one could be elected a Nant’an. Apaches would follow Nant’ans based on the wisdom they saw in their lifestyle.  This made the Apaches incredibly hard for the Spanish to fight. There were no Emporers to kill to take over the Apaches. Kill one Nant’an and two or three more would rise in his place. The decentralization that characterized the Apaches made them immune from the attacks that worked so well in a centralized society.  Surprisingly, not only did attacks on the Apaches not destroy them, but it made them stronger. The more they were attacked, the more decentralized they became.

And here is where our authors teach us the first major principle of decentralization: “When attacked, a decentralized organization tends to become even more open and more decentralized.” They go on to explain how this has happened within the music industry. MGM and other companies continue to sue P2P sites. Every time they win, the P2P site close down, but the community becomes more grass roots and more decentralized, effectively making them harder to track and bringing more attention to the “cause” of free music.  While the music industry is winning court cases, they are shelling out massive amounts of money. The glory days of making the money they were once used to are over. Meanwhile, the P2P sites get more decentralized and harder to track down…

What does all of this mean for the church? Well, there are some profound implications that we’ll look at tomorrow…