FOLLOWERS & LEADERS II
ISSUE #59
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. - Alan Kay
ENCOURAGE OR COMMAND
IkoCiti is a Citi that hosts many different groups that interact with each other in different settings. We want to encourage those groups to find their inspiration in the Pleistocene Era (50.000 years Before Now) symbolized by the Australian Aborigines living in more or less leaderless (egalitarian) societies – everybody chipped in as much as they individually could – to survive the hard life. We do not go Full Monty on egalitarianism though because we are living in the Now ?– you know budgets, deadlines, milestones, and all that. ?All of us are on the clock and it is not a Pleistocene clock.
For the first time in history communities could accumulate resources through harvests, and leaders (the so-called Big Men played an important role in the redistributive economy. As communities grew so did the potential for conflict within and between them. To deal with this, leaders were sometimes awarded extra powers and this sometimes led to more formalized leadership structures, giving rise to the emergence of chiefdoms and kingdoms.
We assume that without continuous training, most IkoCiti groups will somehow ‘degenerate’ to some form of (semi) authoritarianism. Most people only lived in a ‘command & follow’ environment. IkoCiti does not want any of that; we choose an RDHY model which decentralizes the decision-making structure to empower the real producers of value. It would be counter-productive to allow groups within this decentralized structure to form chiefdoms run by a few dominating figures. To avoid groups going all Putin/Trump on us, we design a reward system that strongly favors deep collaborations and makes playing the caudillo/bully a high-risk strategy with little upside.
Why are we against dominant leadership chiefdoms?
Commanding people makes them dumber as they tend to focus on following the rules without thinking. Mavericks need to become smarter and that starts with being yourself,?looking at the world as-is, and boosting your curiosity.?Freedom-4-All is not only a moral principle; it is a key driving factor for innovation and higher-quality output. IkoCiti is designed as a level-playing field that can not be used for individual ‘enrichment’ at the expense of the platform, ?and - vice versa - prevents the platform (shareholders) from becoming an exploitative player at the expense of the Mavericks.
The solution – surprisingly – is not that hard to achieve given the specific nature of IkoCiti (at least in theory). All activities and interactions in the CITI are fully tied to delivering on our promises (to the impact buyers). The promise is Validated Peoples’ Impact, produced reliably and consistently. If we don’t, we are fucked. We don’t deliver Validated People Impact, we go down Titanic.
FIRE ALERT
Followers and leaders are equally important for our success. They are our hearts & lungs. We train our leaders – at all levels – to be like co-building captains leading by example. And when things go well, you have a hard time distinguishing captains from players. But when things go south, the leader has to step up. The job of a leader is to mentor his group to have success (the inspirator) but if things go south she needs to assert herself to avoid disaster (crisis manager). And if need be, she needs to reach out for help. ?
But when do you make the final call?
All the leadership books and inspiring words from mentors can’t teach you to make the right call at the right time. It is a like an investor seeing a stock drop. Do you cut out, or do you accept increasing unrealized losses? Short-term market timing is a bitch, regardless of how good a leader you are. Talking from experience, the best way to establish stop-loss points is before (!!) you enter into high-pressure emotional situations.?
领英推荐
Despite the independence of the groups, the funded projects are too valuable to fail. If Group A cannot deliver; Group B needs to do it. But the timing is important – it cannot feel subjective or panicky. We need to formalize the process in such a way that everybody sees it coming. The solution is to design a Group X Barometer Index measuring the daily-adjusted performance of the groups with the prime objective to establish Alerts triggering pre-determined actions.
The best preventive measure to avoid any ‘Fire’ scenario is to make groups – in general – as smart as possible. For instance, we train everybody to be a leader/entrepreneur knowing full well that not everybody desires to be one. And we do so with a specific motive – we want to groom leadership-qualified followers. The groups periodically choose their leaders but – and this is important – that does not mean they become passive followers waiting to be ordered around. They are empowered followers who must be able to evaluate their group(s) like leaders looking at the whole picture.
MAVERICKS TRANSFER MARKET
Our job is to grow a solid leadership pool that ensures higher-quality operations throughout the platform. The best way to do so is to enforce the voices of the followers. The followers need Power to counter potential bullies, or over-dominant behaviors of leaders/elites. This does not have to be only through formal governance rules.
In their redistributive role, leaders could siphon off extra resources and use them to strengthen their power base by creating an elite, and, in some cases, making their leadership hereditary. It quickly became attractive for clever, resourceful, and dominating individuals to pursue positions of leadership. Unlike the EEA, it was difficult for people in settled communities to move away from exploitative leaders, and the power gap between leaders and followers steadily increased.
If millions of Venezuelan people are leaving, you know that the system has failed. Members wanting to leave is a negative indicator for leadership. The purpose of the Mavericks Transfer Marketplace is not only to facilitate people to find a better group but it is also a correction mechanism against bad or mediocre leadership.
DELIVER THE PROMISE
IkoCiti is a highly gamified environment in which winning the game means delivering the promise to our impact buyers. In the Rendanheyi lingo, it is called zero-distance to the customer – a total focus on the client. Our impact buyers are more collaborators than clients – they buy impact that benefits the barrio. The shared goal – the rebuilding of the barrios – creates another dynamic than a ‘normal’ client/producer relationship. Yet - despite shared convictions - impact buyers must also act as critical customers refusing to buy mediocre quality project plans. Their selective buying (raising the bar) forces all groups to do better because mediocre-quality output does not impact the barrio.
The best way to zero-distance the impact buyers is to work in a decentralized, fully transparent environment with fairly egalitarian groups competing at one level while collaborating on another. Leaders and followers are intrinsically tied together to deliver the promise. Together they win. Together they lose. Sure, not every group member will make the same monies. Those who take up more responsibilities/work (more risks) get a higher cut but also suffer bigger penalties when failing.
The leadership role in IkoCiti is solely a functional position - today you are the captain; tomorrow a follower. What matters is what you bring to the table. Do you bring the A-game, or not? As a platform, we need smart leaders but our ultimate strength is the quality of the so-called followers. In IkoCiti, followers shape the leaders with their power to influence the whole manufacturing process.
Where many think Leaders & Followers, IkoCiti thinks Followers & Leaders.