When Organizations Don’t Have Bosses…

In all of the hype around Bitcoin, blockchain, and crypto-tokens from a short-term investment perspective, it’s understandable that we might lose sight of the real impact of the larger trend and its implications.

One of the biggest ones is the organization of companies and, arguably, society itself.

I recently read a mind-blowing (for me, at least) article called “Let’s get this straight, Bitcoin is an experiment in self-organizing collective intelligence.”

The author, Jordan, articulated in an extremely strong way the proof of concept that Bitcoin has demonstrated to the world.

This new entity, a SOCI- Self-Organizing Collective Intelligence, has been able to achieve something pretty remarkable.

As Jordan writes,

“Beginning with essentially no backing and no resources Bitcoin has been able to organically attract attention and energy to grow into something that includes dozens of exchanges in something like 40 different countries and a computational infrastructure that processes an astounding 14 Million PetaFLOPS.

And it has done this while innovating directly against one of the most fundamental components of our current social fabric: money.”

But this isn’t a story about Bitcoin or even Blockchain. It’s about Decentralization and how goals-world altering-goals can be achieved using a new infrastructure and paradigm.

I think that’s the difficult part of this blockchain revolution for most people-including myself-to grok.

Pretty much everyone you know has grown up in a world of hierarchy, command and control. It’s what we know.

But, as Johann Gevers points out in this great TED talk “The four pillars of a decentralized society,” this is a relatively new thing.

What’s more, it’s not necessarily the way that nature intended.

The forest eco-system doesn’t have a command and control structure. Neither does the desert.

Fish swarm as do birds in a type of collective intelligence that makes the group more powerful and safer than the individual.

Plus, it allows for information at the edges (where innovation and threats typically arise) to more quickly get disseminated to every other part of the organization.

If you buy into the thesis of Tom Friedman’s book, Thank You For Being Late, we are living in an age of accelerations.

That means the threats to your business (and our climate!) emerge faster and require faster responses.

How many global climate accords have there been? Kyoto, Copenhagen, Paris….

Those responses just take TOO damn long when they go through existing channels or governments. Same with businesses. It’s why more than 50% of the S&P since 2000 no longer exist.

Now, thanks to blockchains (which help us solve governance and financial incentive issues) and Internet (help with communication and connectivity), we have a new platform for innovation.

This paradigm, as Jordan writes, is “intrinsically global” and “intrinsically virtual.”

In other words, the cost of getting the best, smartest people involved to solve a problem and coordinating with them is lower than ever before.

Which leads to better innovation, faster.

Which is what we need to help ourselves, our businesses, and our planet.

The “organizations” of the future are going to take on an entirely different shape than anything have ever seen before.

They will be faster, more dynamic, and more nimble.

The will not be command and control. Like the technology, they will be decentralized.

They will be self-organized and thanks to blockchain, they won’t be “all talk, no action.”

I believe that the key to the future is approaching this era with a “beginner’s mind.” Then, work backwards.

Think about how you can be a better collaborator. It’s about inspiration, not control or dictation. It’s about communication clarity. It’s about providing VALUE to self-motivated people. You don’t have to convince the believers. You just have to find them and give them a platform.

It’s radical, but it’s coming.

It will be disruptive, but I think it’ll be exciting and, ultimately, beneficial.

Your Action Item: Read the article.

Feel free to be mesmerized