I missed last night's Social Media Club Austin meeting - for a great reason - we went to Moonshine to celebrate Katie turning 12 years old.

Luckily a number of folks twittered their notes - a summary is here.

I was particularly fascinated with these two nuggets:

                  

conniereece:  Management is becoming support function not control function.
LaniAR: As smooth as it sounds for roles to "emerge naturally," it looks like a mess, even when it works

image from john curley

These reminded me of the wonderful book The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom,   which came out last year.  The core premise of the book is that starfish distribute their major organs across each arm, allowing them to regenerate & adjust with an extraordinary amount of flexibility. Like starfish in the sea, starfish organizations are organized on very different principles than we are used to seeing in traditional organizations. There are so many examples of Starfish organizations, from Southwest Airlines to Early Christianity to SAIC.  In contrast to the metaphor of starfish organizations, spider organizations are centralized and have clear organs and structure. You know who is in charge. You see them coming.

Most of our experience on a formal level, on an official level, is with spiders - we praise them when they are nimble or innovative.  We make heroes of the people who are in charge, even building media to herald their arrival, milestones & departure.  Spiders are naturally preditory - from the beginning of time, they have symbolized possessiveness and storage for their spinning of their prey into a ball and taking it to a burrow.