Starfish Is/Are Singular and Plural: Part 1
Decentralization seems like the answer. Is it?
I took my dog Sam to the beach. It’s the Dog Beach, so it’s not as pristine as some other beaches around here, with a lot more oceanic matter thrown up on it.
On that particular day, just at the waterline, there were starfish. (Starfishes? Hmm. Either, apparently.) Lots and lots of starfishes. I had never seen so many on that beach, or on any beach, for that matter.
I stopped and admired them, even venturing an index finger to touch their nubby surfaces. I made my husband come look at them, too. We marveled at their proliferation, then continued on, preventing Sam from snarfing up and eating the natural sponges that dotted the beach.
I didn’t think much more about it.
Later that day, I scrolled through my Substack feed and stopped to read an article in
, a publication I had subscribed to only a few days earlier, based purely on its decidedly optimistic description: “on a quest to end corruption in the systems that govern over our lives; champions for decentralization, transparency, human imagination; human growth and human potential.”Frankly, they had me at “on a quest to end corruption...” Even if they couldn’t deliver on that grand quest, I wanted to hear how they proposed to try.
The article I landed on that day mentioned a book on leaderless organizations. (I would discover later that they mention that book a LOT, so it’s no surprise I happened upon it.) The book is called The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom.
I come upon book recommendations all the time, and rarely do I act on them — unless something compels me. Like, I don’t know… a beach full of starfishes??
I checked it out of the library that day.
I have a soft spot in my heart for decentralization, having been either a Waldorf parent, trustee, or administrator during a spate of almost two decades at two different schools — one in CT, the other in NY.
Waldorf schools follow the philosophical teachings of Rudolf Steiner — an impossibly wide-reaching philosopher, intellect, and mystic, who created Waldorf schools in part as a response to World War I. He believed that curriculum should be free from governmental influence, decoupled from the state, and that the teachers in each school should provide the leadership for it.
(More on his prescient ideas about education, health, gardening, government, and culture here, if you’re interested.)
His freedom-focused, flat leadership model has translated into “government by consensus” at most modern Waldorf schools. In CT, everything was decided by consensus. There was no single “head of school” who handed down edicts; the faculty ran the school. Even the board of trustees, which really served at the faculty’s behest, operated by consensus.
When I first experienced consensus decision-making as a board member there, I wanted to run screaming from the worn-out kitchen table around which we usually met. Are you kidding me? We can’t just VOTE on whether to hire Contractor A or Contractor B? All eleven of us have to AGREE? We will be here ALL NIGHT!!
What I soon realized, however, was that facilitation of consensus is KEY. Without a skilled facilitator, the group could, and did, circle endlessly around and around, wilting and despairing in equal measure until enough time elapsed for either a) the participants would go along to get along the hell outta there; or b) the issue would be placed on the agenda for the following meeting, where the cycle repeated itself with desperate, if noble, futility.
With the right skills, however, a good facilitator could, and did, encourage the group to really hear one another, address concerns and misgivings, and come to a decision collectively — often a decision that was better than the original proposal, because it included suggestions by naysayers, ideas that would never have seen the light of day were it not for the consensus-building process that elicited them.
The coolest part? Over time, the group as a whole learned how to facilitate itself. We didn’t need the same person facilitating every time; we could change it up and share that role among everyone. Some were naturally better than others, but everybody eventually learned to lead the group to make a decision.
I grew to love consensus, and the whole non-hierarchical model. I wasn’t aware that the principles at work within it might also be the seeds of its resilience.
The Starfish and the Spider is a business book. As such, it’s not a literary masterpiece; it’s an excellent idea laid out compellingly in Chapters One and Two, then stretched whisper-thin throughout nine chapters with abundant whitespace. I’m going to save you some time and ennui by boiling it down to its central thesis. You’re welcome.
Let’s start with the comparison, surprise surprise, between a starfish and a spider. Similar in appearance and locomotion, they are worlds apart in command control; a spider is governed by its massive centralized head/body, whereas a starfish doesn’t actually have a head. It stores most or all of its vital organs in its arms.
Want to kill a spider? Easy: remove the head. Want to kill a starfish? Not so easy.
Since it has no head, you might think cutting it in half would extinguish it. Nope. For those of you who napped during 9th grade biology, this will rock your world: remove any part, and the starfish will regrow it. Some types of starfishes can actually regrow another whole starfish from any part, even a small portion of one leg.
Even for me, who paid attention in 9th grade biology, it’s still a mindblower.
Authors Brafman and Beckstrom don’t start with defining the distinction between the two creatures, they start with the attempt in early 2000 to shut down Napster, the first platform which used P2P (peer-to-peer) technology to freely “share” (if you were a user) or “pirate” (if you were a record label) music. Napster was upending the century-long corporate stranglehold on the music recording industry, and we couldn’t have that, now could we:
“It only took about a year for the music industry to realize how bad this new platform was for business and come together to attack with full force. Over a dozen record labels, including major players like Warner Brothers, Sony, Universal, Island, Interscope and A&M, which led the charge, filed suit…”
Napster didn’t have a chance. It lost the suit, forcing it into bankruptcy. But Napster’s demise spawned other platforms — like Kazaa, Grokster, eDonkey, and eMule — each one more decentralized than the one before it. Every time one got shut down, another one popped up, even more determined to resist.
And a starfish metaphor is born.
The authors contend that because these post-Napster, decentralized P2P starfishes don’t have a CEO, or a corporate structure, or even a headquarters, they will continue to proliferate into the future, unsquashed. A hopeful vision.
It’s not Brafman and Beckstrom’s fault that they couldn’t crystal-ball the reality of the music industry in 2023. They wrote the book in 2006, surfing the wave of new technology that was making decentralization more and more feasible. (Don’t ask me to explain any of it. That’s way out of my league.)
Their optimism was logical, but not prescient. The above-mentioned 2018 Forbes article explains that Napster eventually re-emerged, after changing hands multiple times, as a subscription-based on-demand music purveyor, like Spotify or iMusic. A quick search reveals that it’s still operating that way.
From the Napster website:
“Napster was the original music industry disruptor. A name steeped in innovation, it is proudly synonymous with music. It started a revolution as the very first platform to imagine how we would all enjoy entertainment in the future.”
“We’re an established, globally recognised brand with a proudly disruptive legacy, with existing agreements in place with industry stakeholders.” [emphasis mine]
Don’t you just love PR? Those are some choice phrases: “proudly disruptive,” “started a revolution,” and “how we would all enjoy entertainment in the future.” Gone is the admittedly illegal piracy element, the decentralization, and the rogue, middle-finger-raised-to-the-syndicate quality, replaced by a profit-focused, centralized, branded-within-an-inch-of-its-life corporation that now looks a whole lot like… well… a spider.
If ya can’t beat ‘em, right?
My favorite line from the Forbes article:
…in an era when the industry is only just recovering from a decade of crippling piracy that decimated profits and closed many a company, it’s crazy to think that the brand has endured…
That poor, gargantuan monopoly! Almost shut down from “crippling piracy!” The horror!
Napster’s total revenue in 2021 was $111.1 million, thought it’s not clear to me if the company is actually profitable yet. Spotify and iTunes are doing just fine, though. And here’s a fun tidbit: Sean Parker, one of the original founders of Napster, went on to invest in (and work for) a number of other startups — including FaceBook — and is now worth $3 billion. Oh, and five years ago, he was worth only $2 billion. Nice going, Sean!
He’s making far, far more than the 99.99% (I made up that number, but it’s probably darn close) of music artists currently trying to make a living at their art. Back in 2001, when the music monoliths sued Napster and the ensuing P2P companies, the monoliths didn’t dwell on the fact that those P2Ps were eviscerating their bottom lines; they positioned themselves as humble heroes, fighting for the (copy)rights of those poor, individual starving music artists. (Whom, by the way, they’d been fleecing for 100 years.)
Isn’t it interesting how the narrative has shifted? In 2006, the book’s authors viewed music sharing as a rebellious act. Now, the prevailing belief is that the only “right” way to share music is through subscription services. (Again, thanks, PR! Anyone like to speculate who financed the shaping of that particular narrative?) Yet individual music artists are no better off than they were; they’re still making pennies compared to the “major players like Warner, Sony, Universal…” etc., etc., etc.
We’ll never know what solution might have arisen if the monoliths hadn’t sued every P2P music-sharing platform into oblivion. Perhaps those platforms might have come up with a way to cut out the corporate middlemen entirely; clearly, that’s what the major players were losing sleep over. It’s also what Brafman and Beckstrom thought would happen.
Instead, so far, I’m afraid we have to chalk one up for centralization:
Spiders: 1
Starfishes: 0
Let’s look at another example given in The Starfish and the Spider.
Brafman and Beckstrom liken the battle between the music labels and Napster to the battle between the Spanish and the Aztecs. The Conquistadors easily vanquished the centralized, hierarchical Aztecs by killing Montezuma and surrounding Tenochtitlán, starving its inhabitants within 80 days.
Remove the head, and a spider dies.
A similar fate befell the Incas, such that by the 1680s, the Spanish forces thought they were invincible. They had yet to encounter the Apaches, however.
Unlike the Aztecs and Incas, the Apaches were not gold-gatherers and city-builders. They didn’t build roads, and they didn’t have one single leader. The Apaches had Nant’ans, cultural and spiritual individuals who led by example, not by invested or coercive power. Tribe members followed them voluntarily, believing that the actions of the Nant’an were right and true. Followers were inspired by their
“strength of character, an ability to promote consensus within the group, and the exemplary fashion in which they conducted their own lives.” — Keith H. Basso, Handbook of North American Indians: Southwest, Volume 10
When the Spaniards encountered resistance from the Apache, they did what they always did: killed the leaders and assumed that the followers would fall with them. But as soon as they eliminated one Nant’an, a new Nant’an would emerge to take his place — just like a new starfish arm. Their strategy failed, over and over.
The Apaches held the Spanish off for almost two centuries. Why? According to Brafman and Beckstrom, it was because the Apaches exemplified most of the regenerative and resilient qualities of a decentralized organization: they had no figurehead; decisions were non-local and made everywhere; and the culture prized flexibility, ambiguity, and shared power.
Here is the book’s full list of decentralized organizations’ attributes:
There’s no one in charge
There are no headquarters
There’s an amorphous division of roles
If you take out a unit, the organization is unharmed
Knowledge and power are distributed
The organization is flexible
Units are self-funding
You cannot count the participants
Working groups communicate with one another directly
Ultimately, as the West was overtaken by more settlers and the U.S. government devoted more resources to protect them, the Apaches’ days were numbered. Geronimo was the last Nant’an.
Even though the Apaches eventually succumbed, I have to agree with the book’s authors that their prolonged survival was a success, especially when compared to more centralized societies like the Aztecs and Incas. 200 years is nothing to sneeze at.
So, Starfishes “knot it up,” as the football announcers like to say:
Spiders: 1
Starfishes: 1
Full disclosure: when I sat down to write this essay, I thought the task would be fairly simple — to share with my readers the book’s insights about decentralization and its “unstoppable power.” I thought it would be easy, a slam-dunk of optimism. Didn’t the founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar, call The Starfish and the Spider a “compelling and important book” in an endorsement emblazoned on the front cover?
Don’t misunderstand me; it is an important book. The significant difference between a spider and a starfish, and their metaphoric relevance to organizational models, is gold. Yet like a time capsule, the book is becoming more important, I believe, as the years pile up and more evidence reveals itself, to either bolster or negate the authors’ ideas.
At this point in our evolution, 17 years after Brafman and Beckstrom wove stories together to advance their central belief that decentralization is the key to any organization’s resilience, the yarns seem to be unraveling just a bit. Not completely, mind you, but enough to make me wonder why.
I started this essay by saying I was intrigued by
’s mission to end corruption. I’m still intrigued, even more so now that I’ve read The Starfish and the Spider. Yes, decentralization is important, as is transparency. But as you’ll see in Part 2 of this essay, there’s something else that’s vital to ending corruption and creating resilience, something intangible. What is it?I’m beginning to think the answer is related to meaning and purpose… or ethics and morality… Dare I say it? I think it might be spirituality.
In order to answer that question to my own satisfaction — and yours, I hope — I’m going to keep digging into other examples provided in the book (Wikipedia and Alcoholics Anonymous) and found elsewhere (the Catholic Church, the government of the United States, and the WEF).
Because it’s wonderful to understand the power of starfishes, but my heart froze momentarily when I turned the book over to read another endorsement:
[It has] not only stimulated my thinking, but as a result of the reading, I proposed ten action points for my own organization.”
—Professor Klaus Schwab, executive chairman, World Economic Forum
Did yours?
Mary, we’re on the same wavelength. Thank you for this insightful essay! I’ve been thinking and writing about parallel societies a lot lately, pondering personal sovereignty and learning practical ways to decouple from corrupt systemic entanglements.
I envision faith based parallel societies proliferating and prospering. One by one, as we exit the matrix and build our own society, we render the broken down system obsolete.
Regardless of the methods employed, I believe that the original intent determines the outcome. The difference between Waldorf and WEF is the former is educational and consensual and the latter is predatory and coercive.
Thank you, Mary. There is a lot to share!
Do you know if there is a social media especially for home schooling--teachers, parents? I think it would be a wonderful platform where educators, thinkers, student teachers, parents could interact. I was thinking of proposing this idea to the substack staff.
If only you were close by--we could have more than a few conversations.