When a single queen ant flies in to a territory, it is the result of random wandering. The queen begins a colony with no map of the terrain. Ant colonies and bee hives both survive and prosper with no survey of the area. Yet they do create maps which they share. Ants create maps that smell, and bees dance to communicate the path to food.

This is swarm intelligence: knowledge is gathered by the whole group and shared by the whole group. In swarm intelligence, processing information and problem solving is not the function of a single ‘genius’ individual, but rather primarily a process of interaction between the members of the swarm.

Humans, too, can create a team or swarm intelligence. This is the total knowledge, insight and memory built up through the collaborative communication of the whole swarm. Unfortunately many organizations and even many teams function as if the individual members of the organization are unintelligent and incapable of making basic decisions in line with the promises and goals of the group. Human swarms instead choose to assume, empower, increase, and tap into the intelligence of the individual team members.

Swarm intelligence does not need to be omniscient. Too many times people are tempted to wait until they know everything before they do anything. In fact, too much information can literally lead to “infoglut”—which can cause a swarm to become paralyzed. Swarms wait until they have just the right piece of information (for example, either they find a piece of food or a trail to a piece of food). Once they have it, they immediately act.

Tools to build it
• Observation: sharing an understanding of the place where you are
• Monitoring: sharing an understanding of how the place is changing
• Insight: discussing the ‘why’ of the ‘where’ and the ‘how’
• Memory: making shared information easily findable

Dumb parts, when properly connected,
can yield smart results.
Kevin Kelly, New Rules for the New Economy

Case studies
• Dodge & Cox is a mutual fund firm that uses decentralized leadership, consensus, and swarm intelligence to select corporate stocks to invest in (tinyurl.com…)
• Marketocracy (www.marketocracy.com…) is a community of 60,000 online stock traders that tracks the decisions of its top 100 portfolios to set the investment strategy for its mutual fund. Its index has outperformed the S&P 500 in 11 of the past 17 quarters.

Key Readings

Surowiecki, J. (2004). The wisdom of crowds: why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies and nations. New York: Doubleday.

Kiviat, Barbara. “The cult of committee.” TIME Magazine, August 6, 2007, p. 37, tinyurl.com…

Bonabeau, E. & Meyer, C. (2001). Swarm Intelligence: A Whole New Way to Think About Business. Harvard Business Review, May, 107-114.

Many people do not have any power to cause others to do something. However, nearly everyone has one form of power that they can use: the power of influence. Influence comes in different ways. For example, you might defer to someone of higher social rank, or to someone with legal authority. You might respect someone who has more knowledge on a subject than you do—an expert. You might obey someone in order to receive a reward or to avoid a penalty.

In a decentralized swarm, influence is the chief way that a swarm is moved in a specific direction. Influence comes from your strength (personal ability to act), credibility (record for acting, reflected by other’s trust in you), and wisdom (ability to use knowledge competently).

If trust is the currency of relationships, then a person’s reputation is the measure of their value. Reputation can be built by anyone through swarm-building actions over time. This is why every swarm needs transparency and some way of objectively measuring or logging the actions of its members. Basically a swarm must devise a way to tell people who has proven themselves—to make references—as well as to allow newcomers to prove themselves.

This is not to say that swarms begin with suspicions. Most begin by trusting newcomers—and grow to trust members more over time as they demonstrate themselves. (Also examine Tool 10: Transparency).

It isn’t about knowing, but about continuous learning; not about hierarchy, but about relationships; not about seeking stability, but about encouraging dynamic interplay; not about being self-contained, but about being connected; not about singular solutions, but about multiple opportunities; not about control, but about positioning for innovation and creativity; not about competition, but about collaboration; not about the parts, but about the ‘multiple wholes’ that can be made by continuous integration and disintegration.
Dr. Rick Foster, Vice President
W.K. Kellogg Foundation

Strong men do not need power. The weak are destroyed by it.
Richard Stiller, in “Influence as Power”

Case studies

• Toyota enables its workers to make suggestions, and implements 100% of the suggestions. If a suggestion proves bad, workers simply “suggest” to reverse the idea. Toyota receives (and implements) over 1 million suggestions each year.

Additional Readings
Brafman, O., & Beckstrom, R. A. (2006). The starfish and the spider: the unstoppable power of leaderless organizations. New York: Portfolio. “The hidden power of the catalyst,” p. 107-132.

Journal it: how can you…
• encourage the sharing of opportunities (to keep the promise) and threats (that might stop it from keeping the promise)?
• enable swarm members to suggest courses of action and to critique suggestions?
• quantify the history of people’s contribution to the promise and thus identify people who make a positive impact?
• begin making decisions through consensus and collaboration (not the same as majority rule)?

Human swarms share with each other too. The editors of the Internet-based open source encyclopedia Wikipedia rely on a variety of communication tools: RSS Feeds, chat rooms, email alerts, and talk pages. Through these they are immediately alerted to any problems. In Africa and Asia, people are creating businesses leasing cell phones so that farmers can check market conditions in the city before they head out with their wares. Communication is critical to human endeavors.

Swarms require an infrastructure for the dense communication of functional information–the basic stuff you need to work: threats, opportunities, food sources, new members, etc. This does not mean all participants must be in constant communication. Not all bees are dancing at the same time. However, the system must enable the secure, prompt, broad dissemination of information from the swarm to its members and outside audiences. Communication can take two forms: one-to-many broadcast streams, and many-to-many conversations. Each have their role. Ant scents and bee dances are a form of one-to-many communication. Online threaded discussion boards and face-to-face conferences are both forms of many-to-many communication.

Communication guides a swarm’s actions. More frequent communication enables “mid-course corrections.” Less frequent or unreliable communications causes stragglers to go the wrong way.
Communication also enables feedback on projects. Most projects make a series of small mistakes as they “feel their way” to success. When information is shared, these small mistakes can be quickly corrected before they become mistakes.

Communication recruits new members. The swarm attracts new people by sharing its plausible promise with potential new members. Since a swarm is essentially a group of relationships, expansion is governed by the ease of communication: the easier it is to join the communication system, and the greater the perceived value for doing so, the more people will be likely to say “yes.”

Whatever communication system you adopt—SMS, e-mail, printed messages—it must be easy to use or no one will use it. It must be relatively secure, or it may be intercepted by those who would subvert the swarm’s purpose, take it over for their own use, or try to destroy it. It must enable both one-way “group broadcasts” and 2-way one-on-one communication.

Open communication fosters trust.
John Maxwell

Case studies
• In Nigeria, Internet access is often difficult and expensive, and surface mail is slow and costly. People instead use cell phones and SMS messages to communicate.
• Low-tech: Somali warlord Aidid proved adept at eluding those seeking to capture him while retaining full control over his forces by means of runners and drum codes.
• Although individual blog writers author their own blogs, most focused on a particular topic are aware of each other, monitor each other’s writing and exchange comments. Bloggers have affected elections, toppled well-known news media leaders, and had a significant role in the spread of ideas as well as fads. This trend is not contained in the West: China is estimated to have over 60 million bloggers in 2007 despite censorship laws.

Journal it
• What communication methods are used by 90% of your current members and the majority of your audience?
• Can you agree on a common communications protocol?
• Is anything keeping you from using this system, right now?
• How can you improve the frequency and quality of communication?

Every organization, whether it is centralized or decentralized, has a structure. Structures make the organization usable and active. Think of a structure as the “skeleton”: without the skeleton in your body, you would not have shape, mobility, or strength.

Bravery arises in part from observed success. Because you have seen others accomplish something, you are more willing to attempt it on your own: particularly if you have someone who can help you do it.

A brave structure is neither timid nor reckless. Humans must balance safety with speed. Those that are too safe are typically immobile: they never do anything. Those that are too mobile, too fast, too reckless can be easily destroyed.

A brave structure is neither nebulous nor rigid. It is defined enough to be seen, understood and functional. It must be flexible enough to adapt to the environment, yet stable enough not to change just for the fun of it. It must be cheap enough to be sustained with the resources the swarm has access to, yet have the capacity to gather, sort and use resources. It must be fixed enough to be findable, yet mobile enough to move if required (because structures that are threatened yet cannot move will die).

In most swarms, the structure has more to do with connections, times and locations of action, and how meetings are facilitated and people are connected, then about rank, titles, or purchased possessions like buildings or tools.

Most swarms are created first by organizing large numbers of small groups, each of which have 7 to 12 people, and each of which share a common purpose. These groups are later linked together in larger swarms to share information. However, in a swarm the responsibility and decision to act always lies with the individual group. Larger networks are not for command-or-control. Authority often instead flows from the promise up to the individual and group and through them to the wider swarm—not top down.

No one was rewarded for doing what was easy. Doing what is easy is unremarkable. Everyone does what is easy. People—and companies—are rewarded for overcoming their fear. For taking risks.
For being remarkable.
Cam Beck, ChaosScenario.com…

Case studies
• The environmental movement uses small groups of protestors linked together to disrupt governmental meetings.

Journal it
• What are the basic processes required to promote the promise and recruit your initial members? Do you need to build more at first?
• What relationships and hubs (see “Connected”) will you need? What structure is required to recruit and maintain these?
• What structures are needed to maintain connections and communication between the members of the swarm?
• What structures are required to enable the swarm to “go active,” to switch from information into activity?

Decentralized organizations are not a covenant with anarchy. Instead of doing “what is right in their own eyes,” each member does “what is right” according to a shared, mutually agreed set of values—a doctrine.

This doctrine starts with the plausible promise, which points the way to the lofty vision or ultimate purpose. Declaring what is most important gives us a measure of what the swarm values.
Sharing a promise means sharing the values of the promise. These values become the standards by which the swarm is governed. Rather than rules instituted by a central authority, a swarm has agreed-upon self-established norms which members enforce on each other.

Shared values lead to shared behaviors: a few things everyone in the swarm does. For example, ants share a common behavior: “When you smell a food smell, follow it. When you find food, take it back to the hive and drop a scent marker as you go.” Those two simple rules are based on two values—Food and Information—which lead to common behaviors enabling ants to swarm any food source. Behaviors are not unique, isolated or specialized actions. They are categories of activity that should be done regularly by everyone. They can be seen, heard, reported and measured.

When a swarm’s members take the time to establish a plausible promise, list shared values, and identify shared behaviors based on these, they have created a shared doctrine. Shared doctrine enables everyone to react in the same basic way to the situations they find themselves in, and minimizes the unexpected.

The lack of values, behavior or doctrine leads to chaos in which everyone goes in different directions, at different speeds, doing things that no one expects. The result: the swarm will rapidly be pulled apart.

Shared doctrines take time to build. They have to be shaped through mutual consultation and consensus-building. However, the time is well worth it. The combination of a plausible promise and a shared doctrine defines the identity of the group: why and how it does what it does. They are the force that holds a swarm together and enables decentralized leadership. Without the foundation of this common, easily stated standard, a swarm cannot survive.

Values are a stronger binding force than authority.
Deborah Alvarez-Rodriguez, in “The Starfish and the Spider”

Case studies
• Recovery programs like Alcoholics Anonymous all have easily duplicated, simply-stated doctrines.
• During the WTO protests, all groups were required to sign on to a basic set of principles for just that day, even if they did not typically agree with them (e.g. no weapons, no drugs, no alcohol, etc).

Key readings
Sjogren, B., & Robison, G. (2003). Cat & dog theology: rethinking our relationship with our master. Waynesboro, GA: Authentic Lifestyle.

Questions to ask
• Based on the plausible promise, what are the things that you value? (Complete the statement, “I believe…”) Are these shared by everyone in the swarm? Who will be attracted to these values?
• For each value, can you list a few kinds of behavior? Complete the statement, “Because I believe this, I will…” with an action:

What behaviours would damage or destroy trust?
How will information be shared?
How will conflicts of interest be managed?
How will decisions be made?
How will the network be governed?
What will we do with members who don’t observe these rules?

]]> http://www.momentum-mag.org/2008/07/decentralization-shared-doctrines/feed http://www.momentum-mag.org/2008/07/decentralization-promise-keeping http://www.momentum-mag.org/2008/07/decentralization-promise-keeping#comments Thu, 17 Jul 2008 07:53:27 +0000 Justin Long http://www.momentum-mag.org/?p=603 The swarm has a rational, achievable, measurable goal.

A plausible promise is not a lofty vision. Visions fire the imagination but usually are not directly achievable within a reasonable amount of time. A lofty vision might be “eradicating all disease from the world.”

A plausible promise arises out of a vision. The promise is possible, measurable, and actionable. There may be many such promises on the way to the vision. An example might be, “Eradicate polio from India.” Promises must be compelling (what draws us together) and compatible (what holds us together).

A promise is plausible if it is achievable. Could we, without miracles and with realistic resources, fulfill the promise? This does not negate the work of God or of a cultural movement—but that is part of the “lofty vision” rather than the “plausible promise.” The promise should require a long but reasonable period of time on the order of a year, years, or decades. It takes some friends, some hard work, and some time to keep a promise. Some examples would include the Human Genome Project and the effort to put a man on the moon.

A promise is plausible if it is measurable. You can tell if actions are being taken, and you can know when the promise has been fulfilled. For example, if a plausible promise is “to teach 50% of the children of the city to read,” then you can measure the promise by knowing (1) how many children are in the city and (2) how many are being taught over a given time (monthly or yearly) and (3) when the promise will be completed and (4) whether it is being completed fast enough.

A promise is plausible if it is doable. A promise without action is dead. You can do something directly to bring the promise to pass. In the case of the promise to teach children to read, you can recruit teachers and get them teaching the children.

Sometimes a promise is made plausible by being attached to a “first draft” of a product that will help fulfill the promise. That “first draft” may be very poor—yet if it demonstrates the possibility that the promise could be fulfilled, then it can attract people.

The plausibility of the promise is the primary draw for people to participate. If no one believes the promise can really be kept, then no one will want to be involved. A truly plausible promise, communicated, will be both the measure by which you determine your progress and the vision that will draw other people to join your swarm. You can’t build this kind of swarm without it.

Ada gula ada semut. Where sugar, there ants.
People are attracted to what interests them.
Indonesian proverb

When you start community-building, what you need to be able to present is a plausible promise. Your program doesn’t have to work particularly well. … What it must not fail to do is convince potential co-developers it can be evolved into something really neat …
Eric S. Raymond, the Cathedral and the Bazaar

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.
T.E. Lawrence

Case Studies
• The International Campaign to Ban Landmines: to remove landmines from the military inventories of the world
• Linux: to provide an alternative free computer operating system
• US DARPA: “to accelerate the future into being,” unites numerous external researchers into a common goal.
• John Woolman: to abolish slavery.

Key readings
When beggars become choosers, Kaspar Edwards, Firstmonday.org… 5:10, tinyurl.com…

Question to Ask
• What is your lofty vision, your overarching goal or dream?
• What plausible promise will move you closer to your vision?
• How is the promise measurable? What “Measurable Milestones” will let you know when the promise is met?
• What specific actions can you take this week or this month?

Some groups start by asking, “Who’s in charge?” They have a president, a board of directors, or some other leader who tells everyone what they should do.

In decentralized leadership, no single individual is in charge. In an ant hive, no one has rank. Each ant has a role to play, but no one gives orders (the queen just makes eggs). Decentralized groups have little or no centralized headquarters or command structures. If you attack an army’s command structure, you can paralyze them; but leaderless organizations can be incredibly robust (able to survive oppression, suppression, and the lack of resources), adaptable, self-funding, self-perpetuating and self-reproducing.

Decentralized leadership is not the same widely distributed. Some groups are spread out over a wide area. While geographic distribution does introduce an element of decentralization, it is not the same as being decentralized. The globalization of the world is making it possible, for better or worse, for centralized leadership structures to reach deep into distant places.

While no one has rank, everyone has responsibility. Leadership is diffused, spread out among members. Anyone can lead. With no central authority, decisions are made by individuals who self-organize into small teams operating by consensus and collaboration. A plausible promise everyone agrees to serves as the “measuring stick.”

Of course, all ants live by instinct. They have their jobs built into them. Humans are not the same, but we too have things built in: gifts, talents, desires, and dreams. Human swarms can unleash these gifts. Use these tools to help build decentralized leadership in your swarm.

Shared Doctrines
• Plausible Promises: the standard by which everything is measured
• Standard doctrines: shared behaviors based on the promise
• Bravery: a structure that enables security and action
• Open Communication: sharing information and insight
• Influence: acting through relationships

Case Studies
• The ICBL was deliberate in not establishing a central office; each NGO had to find a way to participate in making the campaign work. This structure helped to insure that the ICBL ‘belongs’ to all of its members and that these members would have to be active in the process to achieve the Campaign’s goals.
• Al-Qaeda is a decentralized asymmetrical military group with deep links into related organizations.
• Migros is a Swiss firm owned by its employees as well as its customers. Its 1.9 million shareholders annually approve its budget. The company spends 1% of its annual revenues to benefit the Swiss, is the largest private funder of vocational schools (Gloor 2007).
• Protestors of the World Trade Organization used swarming techniques to protest the conference. See tinyurl.com…

Key Reading

Brafman, O., & Beckstrom, R. A. (2006). The starfish and the spider: the unstoppable power of leaderless organizations. New York: Portfolio.

Gloor, Peter & Scott Cooper, The New Principles of a Swarm Business, MIT Sloan Management Review 48:3 (2007), tinyurl.com…

Covey, S. R. (2005). The 8th habit: from effectiveness to greatness. New York: Free Press.

“Tradition, based on no statistics, reports that the Scandinavian countries were ‘like a mighty hive, which, by the vigor of propagation and health of climate, growing too full of people, threw out some new swarm at certain periods of time, that took wing, and sought out some new abode, expelling or subduing the old inhabitants, and seating themselves in their rooms,’” writes Daniel Boorstin in The Discoverers.
The Vikings were a curious swarm. Each swarm was essentially equal to one boat, of whom the captain was in charge. Viking boats were not generally part of a central, national army although they might work together from time to time. The boat could go anywhere and retreat from anywhere. The captain was nominally in charge but there was a considerable amount of influence exerted by the individual crew members.

The Vikings showed themselves to be cunning thieves and pirates, fearless and harsh warriors, shrewd merchants and adaptable colonists. They were sustained by what they found on the land (territorial, self-sustaining). They migrated into Russia, northern Europe, Iceland, Greenland and even as far as North America. They were highly went anywhere they desired that they could reach in a boat (permissive).
While the first groups of Vikings were primarily raiders, later groups built trade routes and settled colonies. Norsemen became Normans in Normandy. They built up Denmark. Everywhere they showed their ability to adapt, but they remained aggressive. They went on to be the chief leaders in the Crusades.

If you are near an ant colony, you can try this. Put something sweet out: a bit of candy or a piece of fruit. It won’t take long for the first scouts, walking around randomly, to find it. Once they do, they’ll turn around and head back to the ant hive. You won’t be able to see it, but all along the path they will be dropping a little bit of scent along the path.

Any ant who happens along will know what that scent it means: “Follow this to food”—which he immediately will. When he finds the food, he won’t stop to ask if he can help. He’ll just pick up whatever he can carry, turn, and start hiking back to the hive, dropping scent markers along the way to strengthen the trail. Soon dozens of ants will be on the path. Finally, one will pick up the last piece of food. When he does, the others arriving will find nothing. There will be no committee or investigation: they will simply head off in other directions—but this time they won’t leave any scent. Slowly, over a few minutes or hours, the trail will evaporate and no more ants will go to where the food was.

Yet if you were to shove a stick into an ant hive—or worse, a nest of wasps or bees—you would see swarming of an altogether different kind: “follow this and attack.” Individual ants and bees are not very powerful, but when they work together a swarm can kill even very large creatures. Ant swarms, for example, can kill elephants.

Swarms are empires without emperors: they have no ‘bosses’ or ‘chiefs’ or ‘kings.’ This does not mean anarchy: each person exercises leadership. While no single person is responsible for everyone, all members of a swarm take responsibility for each other. Every member is social (connected to other members) yet autonomous (free to act) and flexible (adaptive). Members are capable of proactive action (heading toward a goal), in response to the environment around them. The swarm has a goal and tasks to achieve in order to reach the goal—but there is no single individual who tells the swarm how to do the tasks.

Measure how team-led you are by the following properties:
• Decentralization: anyone can lead, and everyone will lead at some time
• Shared Intelligence: sharing information and insights
• Permissive Responsibility: do what you should without being told

Collective or team intelligence is a key feature of biological teams, such as ant colonies. Perhaps surprisingly, humankind is the only species that operates ‘leader intelligence’–the trust that a small group of leaders knows best for the whole group. Traditionally, human-team management is classic command and control–good for warfare or civil engineering, but poor for organizational teams, especially when distributed, mobile, semi-formal and with ill-defined structures and boundaries. Biological teams are ‘self-organizing’. Instead of relying on a few leaders, every member has the potential to be a leader in some domain and at some time. How can organizations learn to become more like these biological teams?
–Ken Thompson, Inside Knowledge, March 2007

Case studies
• The International Campaign to Ban Landmines
• The Celtic Missionary Movement
• The Antiglobalization Movement

Key readings

Katzenbach, J. R., & Smith, D. K. (1993). The wisdom of teams creating the high-performance organization. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press.

Johnson, Steven (2002). Emergence: the connected lives of ants, brains, cities and software. Scribner.

Strogatz, Steven (2003). Sync: the emerging science of spontaneous order. Hyperion.