The Spider, the Starfish, and Special Forces

The Spider represents a centralized organization. It may have many limbs, but cut off the head and it's a deathblow.

A Starfish, on the other hand, typifies a decentralized organization. "Its center is everywhere and its circumference is nowhere". Cut a starfish into pieces and it will grow into many more starfish.

If you are a centralized organization facing off against a decentralized organization there are three winning strategies you can adopt, according to Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom, authors of "The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations":

• Decentralize yourself
• Force your opponent to centralize
• Attack the ideology of the opposing organization

The worst thing that you can do is consolidate and increase your own centralization.

An example of the first strategy in action ("Decentralize yourself") is the increasing use of special forces to combat decentralized military organizations. Their effectiveness is uncontestable. During the Rhodesian Bush War of 1970-1980 the Selous Scouts, an special forces unit that used the same decentralized organization and tactics as the insurgents, was responsible for inflicting more than 60% of enemy casualties inside the borders of Rhodesia.

The increasingly decentralized nature of conflict in the modern world is also uncontestable. As one Navy SEAL said in the video Prahlad showed me last night: "What's changed? We used to fight behind enemy lines. Now there are no lines."

Given the evolving constitution of ISKCON, and its increasingly decentralized nature, one of the best things that the GBC can do to retain and increase its influence in the long term is to also increase its decentralization. H.H. Sivarama Swami has consciously or intuitively grasped the importance of this dynamic. Rather than speaking only with a single voice, the members need to speak with many different and diverse voices. There can be difference on details, but on the essential issues there will be concordance. This will be powerful.

In areas that are unclear there can be an ongoing conversation, rather than the appearance of an official policy and a unified position which is actually undermined when GBC members interact individually with members of ISKCON.

The "threat of uncertainty" is especially hard for a centralized organization. A centralized organization is defined by its position. If it doesn't have a position on something, if the members don't agree, it's almost like the organization doesn't really exist, or at the very least its legitimacy and credibility are undermined. A decentralized organization, on the other hand, is defined by its processes. Uncertainty and lack of agreement do not threaten the identity of the organization. Chaos, complexity, and uncertainty are all accommodated in an ongoing dialog.

The Vedic civilization is a decentralized one and the dynamics of the Vedic culture are the processes of a decentralized organization. Loose coupling takes place at all levels. Although monarchy might appear to be centralization, the dynamic of decentralization is there: autonomous Kingdoms are loosely coupled into Empires. The same dynamic extends all the way down to individual life.

It is for this reason that the Vedic civilization is able to sustain such a wide diversity of lifestyle and religious practice within it.

Coming to grips with this dynamic will give the Governing Body significant influence in the evolving International Society for Krishna Consciousness.

Otherwise, an underfunded and overstretched centralized bureaucracy is going to increasingly find itself outflanked and enveloped by a more nimble, loosely-coupled and decentralized "organization" that spontaneously forms around issues, and then melts away again into the mist of the night.