Book titles are meant to be deceptively desirable. They are meant to entice and snare, lure you into reading the book. The title is often the thing that alerts your book-neurons in your brain and thus prompts immediate purchase. But then would a book that travels from your brain to the journeys that many corporations make in their hierarchical definition be as interesting as you would imagine? Especially when it tells you no one neuron can help you remember your grandma: they are a bunch of cells that do the trick, almost a grandma cell! Hence even the brain has not just one leader neuron, but many who group together.

The answer is a vociferous yes if it comes to the splendid The Starfish and the Spider. Brafman and Rod have, with remarkable felicity, argued a case for organisations that are leaderless as opposed to the common management travesty of labeling an organisation democratic. Their belief is anchored in several examples that abound in management history of people and organisations that created revenues and impact without a structure, which would have guaranteed the much touted governance issues.

Much like the starfish which looks disarmingly similar to the spider, yet every arm of the starfish is the control system in itself apart from being regenerative: each arm has to choose to travel before the whole starfish moves unlike the spider where there is a control mechanism!

Take, for instance, when Shawn Fanning founded Napster, which enabled you to share music files. Taking on music companies, from MGM to Sony, Napster had no leader or ruler — just a shared belief and that was that music you liked was music you could own. It’s another matter the US Supreme Court shut it down.

... contd.