The authors believe that this kind of leaderless world is not just the preserve of corporations but even had its genesis in tribal behaviour. The Apaches, for instance, were without one single control system and it is this decentralisation system that gets a lot of lip but very little service.

The Internet is mentioned as yet another example of a leaderless world and the analogy that the authors give is interesting. Dave Garrison was hired as the CEO of Netcom in 1995 and his task was to raise funds. For the second round of funding he winged his way to Paris where he met a group of French investors who initially believed they had a mad American amidst them: their concern was not the technology but whether the Internet had a president. Dave had two choices: to keep them confused and irate or to declare himself the world’s first president of the Internet, which he did, and subsequently got the much-needed funding for the Internet.

There is a great deal of merit to a book such as this in these times. With more and more people becoming entrepreneurs even when they are employees, when we look increasingly at technology to collapse borders and geographies, it is values and beliefs that drive businesses and within that levels of motivation and inspiration. People are becoming increasingly intolerant of being told what to do; empowerment has been replaced with the power to execute and this power can only be harnessed if people working in the corporation actually exercise independence both of the mind and the function. In fact the authors believe that most decentralized organisations prepare themselves for competitive attack by becoming even more open and freer if that is possible. The hallmark of a decentralized organisation is , there is no such thing as central intelligence: intelligence is spread and shared so that the maximum people can benefit from it and come up with creatively robust solutions.

... contd.