Wow thanks ErnieI I am a fellow Centrist, and appreciate your work. I will keep in touch with you about these kinds of things from time to time.
All the best, Vik On Thu, Feb 8, 2024 at 1:17 AM Dr. Ernie Prabhakar < [email protected]> wrote: > *Fascinating take on** the aphorism that:* > > > 1. *Large groups outcompete small groups* > 2. *Hierarchy outcompetes distributed* > 3. *Networks outcompete hierarchy * > > > *BDFxing, Or Post-Charismatic Distributed Leadership* > > https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2024/02/07/bdfxing-or-post-charismatic-distributed-leadership/ > (via Instapaper <http://www.instapaper.com/>) > ------------------------------ > > The management cultures I inhabit in my very-online blogger life tend to > run a generation ahead of the ones I support in my very-offline consultant > life, since I mostly support executives roughly my age (49) or older in > traditional orgs. But sometimes, it is helpful to signal-boost management > patterns pioneered by younger people, not just because they work better > than old patterns in new media organizational contexts (Slack-based orgs > for example), but because they work better, *period*. > > One such pattern I strongly recommend you understand and cultivate in your > org if you don’t already is the BDFx, or Benevolent Dictator for *x*, > pattern, where *x* is a time period between an hour or a year or so. The > limits vary by context. In various orgs I’m in, it tends to be days to > months. > > BDFx as a prescriptive term derives from BDFL > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life>, L for > “Life,” as a descriptive term. That term is old and dates to 1995. It > originated in the Python community and is now generally used to describe > the condition of an open-source leader who may find themselves saddled with > more, and longer-term, expectations of selfless (bordering on martyrdom) > leadership than they may want. The condition of the BDFL is captured by > this famous xkcd cartoon <https://xkcd.com/2347/>. > > <https://ribbonfarm.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/IMG_3671.png> > > You see, actual leadership is a thankless job *even* when you’re > motivated by, and being rewarded with, great wealth (stock etc), power, and > fame (being US President, a Hollywood producer, etc). As I’ve argued before > (in a 2015 post > <https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/03/12/the-art-of-agile-leadership/>) > most leaders motivated by those things don’t actually lead. Instead they > indulge in a theatrical grifter activity I call *leadering*, which > delivers the rewards without requiring them to deal with the > responsibilities. In the open-source world, since these adverse selection > incentives are mostly missing, you see more actual leadership, but also > more honest appraisals of what leadership *is*. And more willingness on > the part of people who do it to say fuck you and walk away when the job > goes from being merely thankless to attracting things worse than > ingratitude, like resentment and unfair blame. If you’re toiling away in > thankless obscurity with no wealth, fame, or power anyway, the only reason > to accept martyrdom is if you’re either a masochist or a true saint > defending the world against serious pain. Which is sometimes the case but > far rarer than it might seem, since fake saints are ubiquitous. > > Now what’s the alternative to selfless leaders being burdened beyond > endurance, to the point they say fuck you and walk, causing things to > collapse on the rest of us? > > The usual answer is some sort of collective responsibility mechanism where > everything is done by consensus or voting or something. In theory. In > practice, even deliberative decision-making is hard to collectivize in such > symmetric ways, let alone execution that demands imaginationor judicial > functions that call for discerning thoughtfulness. Tyranny of > structurelessness <https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm> etc. > Only a dimwitted idealist sophomore could ever believe in *that*. > > But concerns about people who want to be BDFL are real, because you *know* > they’re almost certainly (99.9%) in it not to selflessly lead, but to > extract selfish value from a theater of leadering. At *best,* they will > do no harm. At worst, they will lay waste to everything in pursuit of > thinly veiled pursuits of money, power, fame. > > That’s the order of dangerousness by the way. People who merely want money > can be contained by financial incentives. People who want real power for > malicious ends can be contained, at greater cost, by the real dynamics of > power and the need to find competent allies with enough skill (and their > own divergent agendas) to exercise power at scale. But people who want > *fame*; who are solving for legacy and posterity; who feed off the > theater itself… in many ways these are the most dangerous. If in addition, > they *also* want real power and wealth, everything gets exponentially > worse. And the deeper we go into the age of escaped realities, deepfakes, > and the internet of beefs, the more dangerous fame-seeking leadering gets. > > We have a term for people who solve for fame first, and power and money > second: *charismatic leadership*. When it emerged in the early 80s, with > Reagan, Thatcher, and Jack Welch, following a decades-long era of a > retiring, self-effacing form of leadership Robert Greenleaf called Servant > Leadership <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership> (tldr: > Another dumb and idealistic model that doesn’t work), it was a term of > approbation. Charismatic leadership was what the world *needed*, or so we > thought. That idea evolved from Reagan/Thatcher/Welch through > Clinton/Obama/Jobs, to Musk/Trump/Thiel/Putin/Xi. Just the trajectory in > that list of names should indicate the problems. It’s not that charismatic > leadership used to work and has now stopped working. It’s basically > *never* worked, but it was possible to hide the fact near-perfectly in a > broadcast world, got harder in a social media age, and is now basically > impossible in an AI/decentralization age. The myth-making narrative > apparatus that charismatic leadership relied on now produces threadbare > plots with cartoon characters only cartoon people can believe in, *at > best*. At worst it falls apart completely, often revealing pits of > depravity beneath the myths. Often, the nihilistic response of the newly > betrayed charisma-theater-hungry is to shift allegiances to the *openly* > depraved. The failure of charismatic theaters of nobility is often complete > destruction of the ability to believe in any level of even ordinary > goodness and decency, and a perverse addiction to theaters of snowballing > depravity. When your idols are revealed to have feet of clay, it can be > easier to believe we’re all monsters (and give yourself permission to be > one) than to believe in ordinary, non-superhuman mortals with mediocre, > limited amounts of decency and morality to offer. > > Yes, I believe Great Man theory is utter bullshit, an illusion that’s an > artifact of low-information narrative environments. I also believe Straussian > models of society > <http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/leo-strauss-straussian-center/> > are not-even-wrong self-congratulatory conceits harbored by self-important > priestly types. > > Which should make you wonder: Why on earth do you need to believe in > mythic godliness and messianic martyrdom at all? The only good reason is if > ordinary flawed humans are not enough for you, because you have no > independent and satisfying understanding of the world or how it works, > outside of fairytales spun by charismatic grifters. Because if you can > believe others are gods, you can allow yourself to be a child. > > So where do we turn? Enter the BDFx. The post-charismatic distributed > leadership model. > > BDFxing is a leadership model that is self-consciously time-boxed to be > within the limits of human endurance, morality, decency, and fallibility. I > previously argued that CEOs don’t steer > <https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/11/09/ceos-dont-steer/>, but provide > high-momentum, orientation-locked dead reckoning in a stable direction. > That when a leader turns out to be wrong, the right move is usually not for > them to steer and course correct, but to step back and yield to someone > else whose sense of direction seems better for the changed circumstances. > Which means the culture has to foster lots of leaders-in-waiting at all > levels, ready to step up. BDFxing turns this idea into a high-frequency > design pattern. > > The first golden rule of BDFxing is: *If you need to steer, you need to > stop*. A BDFx drive should be a straight-ahead charge at something that > needs an intense spike of organizing and leadership. > > The second golden rule of BDFxing is: *If you can’t be trusted to lead > some times, you can’t be trusted to follow the rest of the time.* BDFxing > demands more of everyone all of the time, but less of anyone when they are > in charge. It requires raising the floor of participation to “functional > adult” in order to lower the ceiling of effort on leadership work to > “manageable by humans.” > > BDFxing is a pattern that has emerged (not surprisingly) in the crypto > world, and in adjacent spaces that use the ideas, if not all the > technologies, like Discord-based groups. In these spaces, many worthwhile > activities and initiatives often fall into, and languish in, the > no-man’s-land between theatrical or real BDFLs on the verge of failure, and > collective action mechanisms that are incapable of acting. And since > bleeding-edge protocol technologies literally don’t work if you can’t make > the leadership model distributed too (see: Conway’s Law > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law>; many people have to run > all these “nodes” these architectures rely on), BDFxing emerged as a way to > semi-ironically announce that you’re unilaterally taking the initiative to > lead an activity through a challenging regime where it would fall apart > without leadership, and actually doing it sincerely, *and then quitting > when the need has passed*. > > Just enough leadership injected, *when* it is needed, *where* it is > needed. > > In the beginning BDFxing was seen as an anomalous and worrisome thing that > should not be needed in a healthy distributed org, and ought to be designed > out, but it is now clear that’s a naive, utopian expectation. BDFxing is a > necessary, load-bearing element in even the *ideal* notion of a > distributed org. It is theoretically necessary, and elegantly inevitable; > it is not a hack or patch to a loftier, nobler ideal of a “leaderless” org. > There’s no such thing as a leaderless org. Not even as a coherent thought > experiment. That idea was a fever dream of the aughts. But there *is* > such a thing as an ephemeral/transient-leadership org. > > Believe it or not, for most things, leadership is not a continuous need > but a sporadic need, with each episode being somewhat unique and > exceptional. Most things muddle along just fine without leaders, most of > the time. Leaders usually get in the way when they don’t realize their job > is not to steer but defend momentum. It’s better not to have them, because > when they ignore momentum and try to steer, they create drag and make > things worse. I’ve gotten radical on this point. Even in an ordinary org > with no special architecture, 80% of activities don’t need to be led 80% of > the time. If that doesn’t seem true there’s a better chance the org or > activity is dysfunctional and possibly shouldn’t exist at all than that it > is a real exception. A need for continuous leadership is a sure sign of > organizational malaise; likely of a cancerous variety. > > What’s more, on the infrequent occasions leadership is needed, it’s rarely > of the same sort twice in a row. Usually things turn out best if > *different* people step up to drive the activity through a new challenge. > Exceptional circumstances usually point to exceptional traits in specific > ordinary people who might be well-matched. The giraffe leads when the > problem is high up, the mouse leads when it is down a long hole. > > BDFxing works better with distributed/decentralized organizations built on > top of distributed/decentralized media. The mark is bottom-heavy anarchic > communication flows (chatty-bottom orgs), hence the correlation with > messaging media like Slack or Discord, and anti-correlation with email or > meeting-heavy cultures that feature inconsequential, non-mission-critical > chatter at the lower levels of the communication stack (if indeed these > levels are enabled at all; there are still plenty of orgs with no > Slack-like messaging bus layer and even physical watercooler culture > sharply curtailed). > > To back up my assertion, it’s not just a medium-is-the-message effect. > It’s not that orgs that have low-level messaging infrastructure do better > with BDFxing patterns. Orgs built that way outcompete those that aren’t > wherever head-to-head competition occurs. In many cases, orgs with silent > lower levels, enforced by a need-to-know culture of siloed secrecy, only > win because BDFxing chatty-bottom orgs haven’t spun up to compete yet. > Tweet this > Share on Facebook > ------------------------------ > > Sent from my iPhone > > -- > -- > Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community < > [email protected]> > Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism > Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/RadicalCentrism/B77D9F42-835B-4A5A-93CD-5DBC1CCDA2FE%40gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/RadicalCentrism/B77D9F42-835B-4A5A-93CD-5DBC1CCDA2FE%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. 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