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Organic models of leadership: Bridging the gap in thought to STO - Asolsutsesvyl - 03-03-2021
(Edited version of an article I originally posted 2014-10-27 on the Cassiopaea forum, where it's been a fine topic in theory but not really relevant to the kind of thought put into practice.)
In recent times, the administration of this community has discussed renewing commitment and ideas for running it, before taking a big new step. The ideas here may be interesting in relation to the vision of something that grows and unfolds more organically, instead of being rigidly managed by a hierarchy.
Close to 7 years ago, in another community, I read a comment in a discussion about leadership that reminded me of concepts of leadership I'd read about in Gerald M. Weinberg's book Becoming a Technical Leader. There are quite different and contrasting ways of viewing and defining leadership. The typical academic "understanding" of it tends to be limited to a simplistic, hierarchical way of seeing it, though, and few are exposed to other ways of modeling it. Hence a dismissal of the traditional idea of "the leader" sometimes extends to a lack of seeing a clear alternative...
Minas Tirith on the Cassiopaea forum Wrote:In my opinion the concept of "leader" is outdated and doesn't work in a true STO community (that we aspire to become). It's a network of people that have different strengths and can support each other, putting others behind on the ladder, but not leading many in a hierarchical sense. Still, sometimes I think, that some people are more active, and Laura, in a way, is a "leader", too, here ... so, still a lot to ponder ...(How things have developed in that community is a topic discussed in another thread.)
Leadership does not necessarily have to be hierarchical -- and Weinberg contrasts the more well-known hierarchical and "linear" approach with the "organic" approach.
The role of models of leadership in understanding it
To begin with a very quick overview of the problems in studying and understanding leadership, from Becoming a Technical Leader:
Gerald M. Weinberg Wrote:In order to recognize leadership in a group, you must have a model that somehow matches the group's culture. [...] Someone once said that the central dogma of academic psychology is that there is one and only one correct solution to every problem--and the psychologist knows it. Any psychologist who believes that simple model will have trouble defining leadership in a way that works in real-world situations. For one thing, such a person would never recognize Martha as a leader. [See the quoted example included at the end.]
There are many models of how people behave in the world. Even within the discipline of psychology, there are dozens of major models and hundreds of minor variations. The sociologists' models differ from those of the psychologists, as well as from the anthropologists, the economists, the executives, and the janitors. The reason there are so many models is that each of them is useful, but only in some contexts. The problems arise when we try to apply a model that doesn't match the situation in front of our eyes.
[...] To be an effective leader, you will have to have many models at your disposal, and be able to switch approporiately from one to the other as the situation demands. Most of the models I favor may be considered organic models, in contrast to linear models, but there are times when I can be quite appropriately linear.
Organic vs. linear models of leadership
Weinberg goes on to compare and contrast organic and linear models of leadership.
Gerald M. Weinberg Wrote:Linear models get their name from the assumption of a linear relationship between events; that is, one effect stems from one cause, and vice versa. Organic models may be characterized by "systems thinking": the belief that event X is the outcome of hundreds of other factors, including the passage of time.
Linear models tend to reduce people to roles, with 'leader' being one of those roles. A well-known type, which more idealistic people may only find suitable as a last resort, is the threat/reward model: "there is one and only one right answer, and anyone who cannot see it must be either dumb or bad." "When we operate out of the threat/reward model, we tend to see the leader's role as issuing threats and doling out rewards." Goodness ultimately becomes a question of hierarchical obedience, regardless of how the official rhetoric may go.
By contrast, organic models basically consider every member of a group, and every factor that affects the whole, in terms of its relationship with the whole. Weinberg ties this directly to his maxim of systems thinking, which intuitively tends to apply whenever things become more complex and interconnected: "It is impossible to change just one thing at a time."
The organic model "allows different people to find a common basis for working together in complex situations. People who abide by the organic model tend to see other people as sharing the same life force, the same spiritual base, and the same kind of relationship among their unique individual parts. They don't compare people to some standard, so they are not tempted to shape people to some ideal image. Such people tend to see the job of a leader as getting people in touch with their own inner harmony."
The attitude towards change usually differs depending on the kind of model used. "Under the influence of the threat/reward model, we may try to assure our security by struggling to keep all people and relationships forever the same. If we do feel the need to change, we usually direct it at someone else. And we usually try to change them by "removing" their "bad" behaviors."
By contrast, "People holding on to organic models need security just as much as everyone else, but they obtain their security by taking risks and by tolerating ambiguity. [...] Organic models expect and accept change as a normal part of the universe. Some organic models go even further, and welcome change as an opportunity to go into the unknown and grow. They have faith that growth is a natural process by which our wonderful potential is realized, in the same way a seed must grow to realize the wonderful potential of the flower."
Linear models are the typical way of managing very-large-scale things, like big corporations or entire societies, from the top-down. On the very large scale, the simplifying (and dehumanizing) assumptions of linear models make things much easier to reason about, predict, and manage -- and to some extent, as a way of managing the complexity, it is often needed in order to be able to get anything done at all. But this only works as long as the situation is stable. As soon as things become chaotic or do not fit the model, attempts to apply it begin to fall apart. It seems that very-large-scale management brings the need for linear models as an inevitable consequence of human limitations, and in turn, overly relying on such models always brings inflexibility, the loss of potential for many kinds of change, and decay -- or entropy -- into the picture.
Organic models describe the way things naturally work in non-hierarchical small-to-mid-size groups and communities, where everyone knows everyone (or at least a significant portion of everyone), and all are seen and treated as individuals. "Leader" may not even be a distinct role -- whoever contributes to the whole is a leader in bringing about a change, or changing the parameters for the unfolding of further change, contribution by contribution.
To wrap up this part...
Gerald M. Weinberg Wrote:In the extreme cases, the threat/reward model of leadership may be characterized by the words "force" and "judge," and the [organic] seed model, "choose" and "discover." In the seed model,
Quote:Leadership is the process of creating an environment in which people become empowered.
[...] Instead of leading people, as in the threat/reward model, organic leadership leads the process. Leading people requires that they relinquish control over their lives. Leading the process is responsive to people, giving them choices and leaving them in control. They are empowered in much the same way as the gardener empowers seeds--not by forcing them to grow, but by tapping the power that lies dormant in them.
Leadership in the seed sense is creative and productive through other people. It is an organic definition, because it works through creating an environment rather than confining itself to a few focused actions--threats or rewards--in a few specific instances to create a few specific results.
To people ensnared by linear models, this organic model of leadership may seem vague and wishy-washy, but it actually lends itself to more precise quantification than the more conventional models. It's especially useful in technical work because, unlike the more linear models, it allows us to take innovation into account.
Innovation is concerned with redefining a task or the way the task is done. Linear definitions of leadership assume that observers have a perfect understanding of the task. Such definitions filter out innovations that the observer hasn't seen before or doesn't understand. Such blinded observers obviously cannot see the possibility of leadership through innovation. In an age of high technology and discovery, such constraining definitions are practically useless.
The "MOI" model of leadership
In 'Chapter 2: Models of leadership', a model called "MOI" is presented. This stands for "motivation", "organization", and "ideas or innovation". The idea is that for change to occur, the environment must contain all three.
The motivation is whatever drives the people involved; the organization is the existing structure that enables the ideas to be worked through in practice; and the ideas/innovations are the "seeds" to be cultivated.
Weinberg notes that "Leadership can sometimes also mean preventing change. If you want to stop some change from occurring, you must do one of three things to the environment:" -- he then lists:
Gerald M. Weinberg Wrote:M: kill the motivation---make people feel that change will not be appreciated; do everything for them so they won't feel the need to do things for themselves; discourage anything that people might enjoy doing for its own sake.
O: foster chaos--encourage such high competition that cooperation will be unthinkable; keep resources slightly below the necessary minimum; suppress information of general value, or bury it in an avalance of meaningless words and paper.
I: suppress the flow of ideas--don't listen when you can criticize instead; give your own ideas first, and loudest; punish those who offer suggestions; keep people from working together; and above all, tolerate no laughter.
This is a good description on the whole of what tends to happen when groups or organizations spiral into a negative way of being. From the most Orwellian cases to much more subtle types of dysfunction, something of the above is often easy to recognize. It's also a simple starting point for considering how environments, their potential, and what ends up manifesting, may change over time and where the present state of things is likely to lead (or not).
There has to be a balance between motivation, organization, and innovation in order for leadership to be effective. Weinberg points out that we all have the potential for all three, and thus for leadership, but that in each individual, some elements are better developed than others. Any person can improve as a leader by working to build the strength of their weakest links. The same extends to groups.
A little bit more about the book
The book contains a lot of material on all three MOI aspects. Concerning motivation, issues of communication and unconscious beliefs affecting how people respond to the world -- their "survival rules" -- enter the picture. One very short chapter presents a model for the communication process drawing on the work of the psychotherapist Virginia Satir. When it comes to "survival rules" (in more modern terms, programmed responses of the adaptive unconscious), personal journaling is recommended as a way of exploring, discovering, and gradually rewriting the often unconscious rules that tend to govern behavior.
Weinberg covers a great many things in a variety of short chapters, often quite humorously.
An illustration of how the conventional view of leadership is flawed
I'll also include the following quote, which both illustrates the problems with how leadership is usually seen, and shows one simple example of leadership according to the organic approach. While the problem being solved in this example is a particular technical one, I think the same principle applies to all manner of problem-solving done in this group.
Gerald M. Weinberg Wrote:Psychologists and management theorists have dozens of models of leadership, with a typical one of their texts offering this explanation:
Quote:There are two principal ways to identify the leaders of a group:
- asking the members to identify which members they regard as the most influential in directing the group, or
- asking observers to name the most influential members, or to record the frequency of effective influencing actions.
Altough they appear to be scientific, these models are based on the opinions of the members of the observers, and on their ability to observe "effective influencing actions." Over the years, I began to see some flaws in this approach.
For instance, a company recently retained me to help a group of computer programmers improve their problem-solving techniques. The company was losing thousands of dollars of sales each passing day because of a subtle error in its software product. Until the programmers could find the error, the product was useless. To help the group, I videotaped them as they struggled to find the error.
In one hour of observation, the "effective influencing actions" of the four programmers looked like this:
Code:Arnie 112 actions
Phyllis 52 actions
Weber 23 actions
Martha 0 actions
Martha's actions were easy to record. She sat like a zombie throughout the entire hour, studying the printout of the erroneous program. She said nothing, made no gestures, and didn't even smile or frown. Without question, she had no influence on the group whatsoever.
After consuming an hour with their effective influencing actions, the other group members were no closer to solving the problem than they had been when they started. All of a sudden, Martha lifted her eyes from the listing, pointed a finger at one line, and said, ever so quietly, "This word should be '87AB0023', not '87AB0022'." Then Arnie, Phyllis, and Weber resumed their agitated discussion. They terminated the meeting ten minutes later, after they had convinced themselves that Martha was indeed correct.
When I asked the group who had been their most influential member, they all said, "Arnie." Then I played the videotape, asking them to be especially alert to the method by which their problem was solved. After watching the tape, Arnie, Phyllis, and Weber changed their answer to "Martha." Why? because in terms of solving their problem, the table of effective influencing actions should have looked like this:
Code:Arnie 0 actions
Phyllis 0 actions
Weber 0 actions
Martha 1 action
Without Martha's contribution, the meeting would have gone nowhere, yet non-programming psychologists would have probably missed Martha's role entirely. When such nontechnical psychologists observe our workshops, they are consistenly befuddled by the dynamics of the team as they solve their technical problems. It's as if the psychologists were watching people from another planet, people whose culture and language look and sound superficially like ours but are entirely different.
(Weinberg however gives the other three half-credit, noting that they allowed Martha to solve the problem undisturbed, while it can easily happen that such is prevented in similar situations involving problem-solving.)
This illustrates how leadership tends to be seen: power dynamics, and what's more visible on the surface in the activity of group members. (Another important aspect of how leadership is conventionally framed concerns who seems the most able to reward or punish.)
By contrast, that which genuinely helps others, is at the core of how problems are ultimately solved, or generally empowers others to make more or better choices so that the can explore and grow in new directions, may or may not look impressive. It does not need to have an imposing appearance. It may often, even when it counts the most, slip by to the extent that no footnote is preserved in the histories being kept. In relation to the ideals of this community, it would seem that bringing about any creative change or contribution is leadership.
RE: Organic models of leadership: Bridging the gap in thought to STO - Asolsutsesvyl - 03-04-2021
In an earlier thread on this forum, Strannik plays the role of devil's advocate, in asking: "How to develop outside the will of dictatorship?" A shorter summary of the book's contents is in my reply here, trimmed further below for a shorter read.
Weinberg's book is from 1986, but seems to have withstood the test of time quite well. The general ideas are fairly timeless, and the kind of thing often ignored in practice in a variety of organizations, and in societies at large, even when the theory is known (and sometimes more extensively than covered by Weinberg), perhaps because when given a choice of linear vs. organic approach, and of preventing vs. trying to further understanding, many of those able to influence the direction go for selfish power struggles at the cost of everyone else, while trying to manage impressions and make others view them as benefactors. I think that's a basic pattern which in simpler forms go back as far as civilization itself.
Regarding more specific bits and pieces of psychological theory Weinberg uses which are not really central, like models of human judgment in communication and simple ideas for self-work to improve, lots of variations on ideas gain and lose prominence over years and decades. For example, the book Crucial Conversations, from 2012, by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzler, presents a modern framework for understanding communication and problems with it that looks an awful lot like a simplified version of the more nuanced ideas from Virginia Satir which Weinberg covered very shortly, though new research is mentioned. Weinberg's ideas of using personal journaling to work through and change unconscious beliefs are also, roughly, mirrored in modern ideas like that of the "Pennebaker writing exercise".
Back in 2014, in the original short discussion which followed at the Cassiopaea forum, the idea of heterarchies was mentioned.
"Navigator" on the Cassiopaea forum Wrote:What about heterarchies? When I first read it made sense moving away from a top-down STS pyramid as it considered the concept of network as the connectivity principle.
This principle was firstly applied to organic/biological aspects of nature, but it is also used under social contexts.
Extract from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterarchy
[...]
It seems like a good thing to include a pointer to, for further general consideration. It's like a basic building block in thinking about matters, much like hierarchy is. The two may or may not be combined in a description, since they are, roughly speaking, perpendicular to one another.
(06-12-2020, 10:53 AM)Asolsutsesvyl Wrote: The discussion of the nature of leadership and alternatives to hierarchical control brings to mind Gerald M. Weinberg's book Becoming A Technical Leader, which contrasts the usual linear threat/reward model with organic models of leadership. Organic models are less popular, but actually more suited for quantification for scientific purposes, whereas the conventional models rely upon subjective estimates of "effectiveness" of "influencing" in a variety of contexts. [...]
A path to seeing a larger range of related things and alternatives is to explore how things (including people) work together as systems. Feedback loops come in two kinds: positive (meaning: self-reinforcing) and negative (meaning: self-dampening). Systems thinkers model how each thing may depend on many other things, so that it is usually not the case that you can change one thing and have the rest remain the same. Conventional leadership models, by contrast, simplify away everything except assigned roles/labels, and pretend that each effect has a single clear cause.
In the absence of a centralized order, people will influence one another in complex ways, which can be modeled. In the presence of a centralized order, it remains the same, except that everything is also tangled up in the hierarchical order. Weinberg simplifies things for purposes of simple systems thinking, and divides individual and collective abilities and dynamics into three categories:
- Motivation.
- Organization.
- Ideas or innovation.
Influence is always going on, in these terms. Environments may have positive (amplifying) or negative (dampening) effects in these categories, and be shaped by people to change in those regards. It's easy to think of examples of people with strikingly uneven skills. Technical people are often the strongest in the third category, and usually have relative problems of personal disorganization and/or being poor at motivating others.
The conventional threat/reward leadership approach is based on simplifying away as much as possible, leaving mainly the assigned roles imposed by the authority, the use of threats and rewards to motivate, and a centrally imposed paradigm shaping ideas and innovation. To make it work, the authority must also have under its control those who get the needed organizational work done, to fill in that category.
Attempts to sabotage, or prevent the growth of movements, etc., threatening an existing or potential order can also be analyzed in those terms. Motivation is targeted through psychological warfare. Social forces of inhibition can be deliberately cultivated in order to stifle ideas and innovation which goes against the grain. Means to get things done in an organized way can be made much more accessible to those favored by an existing authority than those at odds with it.
Look at really small societies, or groups whose functioning is unrelated to the work of a centralized government, and you will see dynamics play out in which people play individual roles difficult to fit into tidy labels, but where leadership is continually going on, in ways which may look very different from those usually brought to mind by the word "leader". The usual ideas of "the leader" and how such things are supposed to look can become wildly misleading in technical work contexts, Weinberg shows through examples.
At an extreme, organic leadership can make for an exploring, choosing, and discovering, without fixed goals beforehand, where people feel as if they serve the same basis of life, with spiritual overtones. The opposite is a view of the world as containing a limited number of ideas, and the deliberate fueling of ruthless competition and limiting of necessary resources in order to prevent new systems from growing to the point where the status quo is threatened.
RE: Organic models of leadership: Bridging the gap in thought to STO - jafar - 03-04-2021
Nowadays, there is an ancient yet 'new' concept of leadership called "Servant Leader".
It rings true to these timeless quotes:
“Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant.”
-- Luke 22
“To lead people, walk beside them.
As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence.
When the best leader's work is done the people will say, We did it ourselves!”
– Lao-Tzu
"Working yet not taking credit,
Leading yet not dominating,
This is the Primal Virtue."
-- Lao-Tzu
It stumbled upon me as our team is adopting what today's known as "Agile Way Of Working".
Where the role of a 'leader' is designated by the role of "Scrum Master", and a scrum master actually only act as a 'coach' to the team, serving the team as facilitator and be the first in line to remove blockage.
An article regarding 'servant leader' within the context of Agile Methodology.
Quote:Agile Description Of A Servant Leader
The Agile methodology describes a servant leader quite well. Their responsibilities are more of a Coach than a “boss”, something that the international institution of Gallup, renowned for their studies on management and Employee Engagement, says is the biggest factor to keeping your team engaged.
Servant Leaders Coach their team – they give them the playbook so they are clear on what to do. They tie the work to a higher meaning – they start with “Why”. You’ve probably heard of the classic book by Simon Sinek by the same name, (Start with Why), where he found the same thing – the best leaders start with the reason behind the work, then work on the “who” and the “what”.
Servant Leaders work towards Mastery – they check-in with their team and guide them towards mastering their skillset – whatever it is in whatever industry you’re leading in. It could be becoming a master salesperson, a master programmer, a master project lead or software tester or change analyst or financial analyst, or anything in between. A good coach understands that there is a foundational skill-set to improve, and is able to coach the team on how to improve it.
A Servant Leader also removes “blockers” – impediments to a team finishing their work. Why is this important? Oh my – there are SO many reasons this is important, speaking as someone who has done the research into all those little psychological nuances that help us achieve our best. Removing blockers has its roots in “Progress” – which, as it turns out, is a core human need for happiness. Teresa Amabile found after studying more than a thousand work diaries of people’s inner most thoughts, that they were happiest when they were making progress in meaningful work. People crave progress, and if you aren’t giving it to them, they will find it somewhere else.
Lastly, a Servant Leader facilitates. He or she doesn’t dictate – it’s more about facilitating the right discussion where the team can come up with the answers themselves.
And that’s where we come right back to the quote by Lao Tzu – “A leader is best when people barely know he exists…when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will all say: We did it ourselves.” We did it ourselves, because our leader was there to give clarity, facilitate discussion, remove blockers, and ultimately help us win.
And that is true leadership.
RE: Organic models of leadership: Bridging the gap in thought to STO - dreamoftheiris - 03-04-2021
(03-03-2021, 11:26 AM)Asolsutsesvyl Wrote: (Edited version of an article I originally posted 2014-10-27 on the Cassiopaea forum, where it's been a fine topic in theory but not really relevant to the kind of thought put into practice.)
In recent times, the administration of this community has discussed renewing commitment and ideas for running it, before taking a big new step. The ideas here may be interesting in relation to the vision of something that grows and unfolds more organically, instead of being rigidly managed by a hierarchy.
Close to 7 years ago, in another community, I read a comment in a discussion about leadership that reminded me of concepts of leadership I'd read about in Gerald M. Weinberg's book Becoming a Technical Leader. There are quite different and contrasting ways of viewing and defining leadership. The typical academic "understanding" of it tends to be limited to a simplistic, hierarchical way of seeing it, though, and few are exposed to other ways of modeling it. Hence a dismissal of the traditional idea of "the leader" sometimes extends to a lack of seeing a clear alternative...
"Minas Tirith" on the Cassiopaea forum Wrote:In my opinion the concept of "leader" is outdated and doesn't work in a true STO community (that we aspire to become). It's a network of people that have different strengths and can support each other, putting others behind on the ladder, but not leading many in a hierarchical sense. Still, sometimes I think, that some people are more active, and Laura, in a way, is a "leader", too, here ... so, still a lot to ponder ...(How things have developed in that community is a topic discussed in another thread.)
Leadership does not necessarily have to be hierarchical -- and Weinberg contrasts the more well-known hierarchical and "linear" approach with the "organic" approach.
To the first point, a hierarchy can exist in STO as well. In fact, it does.
When you consider that "Angels" act in a hierarchical manner, the concept of higher densities, etc. A negative hierarchy is more of a master/slave mentality whereas a positive hierarchy is more of a more advanced/aware / less advanced/aware with the goal of helping the less advanced/aware individual become more aware.
RE: Organic models of leadership: Bridging the gap in thought to STO - Asolsutsesvyl - 03-04-2021
(03-04-2021, 12:30 PM)jafar Wrote: Nowadays, there is an ancient yet 'new' concept of leadership called "Servant Leader".
[...]
It stumbled upon me as our team is adopting what today's known as "Agile Way Of Working".
Where the role of a 'leader' is designated by the role of "Scrum Master", and a scrum master actually only act as a 'coach' to the team, serving the team as facilitator and be the first in line to remove blockage.
[...]
I read a discussion among programmers elsewhere, fairly recently, about "agile" and related terms. One person wondered if there was real meaning to it, having encountered lots of marketing-speak (indistinguishable from nonsense, and skeptical because of how meaningless buzzwords usually are), but got some answers from others comparing it to the old, often-complained-about management styles of the past, making clear that it reflects a real shift. Some good stuff has been brewing and changing since the 00's in the world of programming.
Hope it works out well for you. Myself, I've so far remained a hobby programmer.
(03-04-2021, 01:32 PM)dreamoftheiris Wrote:(03-03-2021, 11:26 AM)Asolsutsesvyl Wrote: (Edited version of an article I originally posted 2014-10-27 on the Cassiopaea forum, where it's been a fine topic in theory but not really relevant to the kind of thought put into practice.)
In recent times, the administration of this community has discussed renewing commitment and ideas for running it, before taking a big new step. The ideas here may be interesting in relation to the vision of something that grows and unfolds more organically, instead of being rigidly managed by a hierarchy.
Close to 7 years ago, in another community, I read a comment in a discussion about leadership that reminded me of concepts of leadership I'd read about in Gerald M. Weinberg's book Becoming a Technical Leader. There are quite different and contrasting ways of viewing and defining leadership. The typical academic "understanding" of it tends to be limited to a simplistic, hierarchical way of seeing it, though, and few are exposed to other ways of modeling it. Hence a dismissal of the traditional idea of "the leader" sometimes extends to a lack of seeing a clear alternative...
"Minas Tirith" on the Cassiopaea forum Wrote:In my opinion the concept of "leader" is outdated and doesn't work in a true STO community (that we aspire to become). It's a network of people that have different strengths and can support each other, putting others behind on the ladder, but not leading many in a hierarchical sense. Still, sometimes I think, that some people are more active, and Laura, in a way, is a "leader", too, here ... so, still a lot to ponder ...(How things have developed in that community is a topic discussed in another thread.)
Leadership does not necessarily have to be hierarchical -- and Weinberg contrasts the more well-known hierarchical and "linear" approach with the "organic" approach.
To the first point, a hierarchy can exist in STO as well. In fact, it does.
When you consider that "Angels" act in a hierarchical manner, the concept of higher densities, etc. A negative hierarchy is more of a master/slave mentality whereas a positive hierarchy is more of a more advanced/aware / less advanced/aware with the goal of helping the less advanced/aware individual become more aware.
I agree that it's not fully black and white. It becomes a bit clearer later on (because hierarchy is not always a matter of the "threat/reward model", for instance), but never fully, in the article.
(That said, I don't believe in traditional religious or spiritual ideas of "the hierarchy of angels" and similar. I think it may be a human attempt to make things understandable, analogous to how dogs may try and fail to understand humans who do things like physics or software programming or various other things. The scale of densities make the gap to the next density "roughly" as large as the gap in comprehension between dog and man. It's even trickier for the density above that, with two such differences stacked on one another, or more accurately, the difference after the first difference cannot be fully understood because the first-order difficulty applies to understanding the second-order difficulty...)
To write something short and sketchy about the stuff that I left out, I think that power and responsibility must be in balance when there is a hierarchical difference in position, in order for the dynamic to be basically constructive. Imbalance is harmful, whether it's power beyond responsibility (i.e. exploitation, or treating others as toys), or responsibility beyond power (i.e. overextension, and possibly martyrdom).
Weinberg, too, makes it a matter of context, and notes that there's situations calling for being "appropriately linear". But organic leadership is held up as the ideal in a way I agree with, and as anti-ideal I had in mind how it's usually not given a chance, or too-easily destroyed after having begun as something great.
RE: Organic models of leadership: Bridging the gap in thought to STO - Patrick - 03-04-2021
The great feature about agile software development is the short iterative cycles.
RE: Organic models of leadership: Bridging the gap in thought to STO - unity100 - 03-07-2021
"Horizontal/flat organization" format which is used in many prominent Silicon Valley firms, and the leadership concept utilized within them, are good examples of positive leadership that is possible within the limits of this particular late 3d society.
Organization members are encouraged to take ownership of what they do, take initiative, decide themselves, implement things themselves, ask help from others and collaborate with each other, be positively encouraging. Whereas being given stock options to make them actual stakeholders/members of the organization. Leadership takes the form of any leader in any point in organization being responsible with providing the best environment for everyone for whom the leader is responsible with, and therefore bringing the best out of their team. Understanding people, having good people relationships etc are musts in such leadership model.
In any case, such a leadership model feels more like 'a music band and its frontman' than the traditional 'leadership' that people are used to.
RE: Organic models of leadership: Bridging the gap in thought to STO - meadow-foreigner - 03-19-2021
In 1 word: Persevere;
In 2 words: Be Creative;
In 3 words: Conquer From Within;