 Jon Husband defines wirearchy, a term he coined, as follows:
"A dynamic two-way flow of power and authority, based on knowledge,
trust, and credibility, enabled by connected people and technology"
'-archy'
comes from the Greek word meaning 'rule, power or authority', and
'hier' comes from the Greek word meaning 'sacred'. When the word
hierarchy was first used in the church, it literally meant 'sacred
rule'. We no longer see our hierarchical leaders in politics or
business as sacred (though sometimes, when I see the cult of
leadership, especially in the US, I wonder), but we have kept the term
to describe the power structure.
Two other suffixes, also from
the Greek, are used almost interchangeably with '-archy', but neither
really refers to power: '-cracy' means 'government' and -opoly' means
'seller'. So a monopoly is a system with one seller, an oligopoly a
system with just a few. And democracy is government of the people while
autocracy is government by one person. The fact that we use the three
terms that mean 'power', 'government' and 'seller' almost
interchangeably shows the perverse degree to which, in our modern
corporatist world, the three terms have become virtually synonymous.
The government and the sellers (corporations) have all the power. Our
'learned helplessness' keeps us from thinking it was ever, or ever
could be, any other way.
This essay is about power, and about
how we give it, take it, and share it. In ancient Greece, rule was by
divine right, while authority was vested, and both held power.
Democracy, in its earliest form, gave 'the people' authority over
dealings with each other, but not power over those in the true
hierarchy, the religious and political leaders who called themselves
'lords' with no sense of irony. Democracy was rules for the children in
the schoolyard, and granted no authority over those who actually ran
the school.
Most of the wars fought since then have been either
religious wars (wars between true hierarchies) or revolutionary wars
(wars aimed at transferring power from the true hierarchies to the
merchant class, and later to 'the people'). The problem with such
'-archies' is that as they get bigger they get more fragile they
become. Malcolm Gladwell, in an article called The Cellular Church*
about preacher and Purpose-Driven Life author Rick Warren, put it this way:
If
I go to church with 500 members, in a magnificent cathedral, why should
I volunteer or donate any substantial share of my money? What kind of
peer pressure is there in a congregation that large? If the barriers to
entry become too low -- and the ties among members increasingly tenuous
-- then the church as it grows bigger becomes weaker. One solution to
the problem is simply not to grow, and, historically, churches have
sacrificed size for community. But there is another approach: to create
a church out of a lot of little church cells. The small group as an
instrument of community is initially how Communism spread, and in the
post-war years AA and its 12-step progeny perfected the small-group
technique. Members sat in a circle. The focus was on interaction -- not
one person teaching [or preaching] and the others listening -- and the
remarkable thing about these groups is their power.
[Churches and others soon found] the small group was an extraordinary
vehicle of commitment. It was personal and flexible. It cost nothing.
It was convenient, and every [member] was able to find a small group
that precisely matched his or her interests.
Gladwell even quotes philosopher Dick Wesley that calls such cells "intentional communities".
How
big is a cell? As big or small as its self-selected members choose it
to be, though the bigger-is-weaker rule would seem to limit it to much
smaller size than the 150 people we are (according to social network
gurus) able to accommodate in a personal network. The key to the cell,
it appears, is the strength of strong links -- members are each others'
families, best friends, work colleagues, and everyone in the cell likes
(loves?) everyone else in the cell. That makes an astonishing bond,
that, if it's cultivated, can be indomitable, and powerful.
What mystifies Gladwell is how Warren and others can manage to harness
that power, essentially without hierarchy. It requires a lot of work to
reach and steer a million scattered cells of ten people than a single
televangelist audience of ten million. But if you can do it, it's a
much more powerful network. The key to reaching these cells seems to be
providing them with a flexible template of activities attuned to their values,
and letting them self-form and self-manage. The multiple short chapters
of Warren's books serve as a menu of choices for his church's sells to
choose from, apply to their own shared context, and learn from. Most of
the learning is from each other.
Surprisingly, Gladwell doesn't discuss how the cellular organization model fits with the Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen in his Tipping Point. Does it fit at all, or has Warren found a way to change the world that is more, er, democratic?
Next
Gladwell tells us what Warren is doing now. He's reverse tithing 90% of
his income from books and donations to third world humanitarian work,
especially the scourge of AIDS in Africa. And guess what?
He
decided to take the same networks he had built to train pastors and
spread the purpose-driven life and put them to work on social problems.
[Explaining how poor distribution networks have hampered third world
humanitarian aid, he says] "Well, the biggest distribution network in
the world is local churches."
So now he's taking his cellular organization and vowing to use it to end world poverty and disease. Now that's power.
Aha!
* Not currently online, but keep an eye out on gladwell.com |
MADE IN CANADA
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