SuperForest,
Ah, It feels so great to be writing again. As you’ve probably noticed, the past few weeks have been spent updating the site and tending to some of the behind-the-scenes details that needed attention. Surprisingly enough (or maybe not), it was during this time of inaction from the blog that I learned a valuable lesson on how I should be treating the way SuperForest, as a whole, is run. You see for me, when I think about ways to improve SuperForest, my mind, by default, goes towards brainstorming, organizing, and planning (just take a look at my polaroid on the sidebar, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise). It’s a personal characteristic (and sometimes flaw) of mine that I’ve shared before. Now, I’ve never considered myself to be very controlling of others, but I do tend to get a little nervous when I feel I don’t have control over my own life and uncertainty, for me, tends to be a bit of a scary thing.
So there I was, concentrating my efforts on things like “efficiency” and “progress” when all of a sudden, I came across an interesting article titled “Anarchy as Management Style“. My curiosity was sparked. Business managers would probably know a thing or two about efficiency and progress, but how could something like “anarchy” be of any value in that field?
I read on…
Smart leaders gather great people and simply let them do. No bulky chains of command. Few rules and lots of play. Failure encouraged. Persuasion valued over coercion…Biological evolution, after all, has produced millions of successful species through random tries, countless failures and fast adaptation. It’s unpredictable, messy and prolific. Not a bad business model all in all.
And then I laughed.
Perhaps the reason why I’ve constantly felt at a loss when it comes to how to organize something like SuperForest and make it more functional is because I’m not supposed to. And applied to a greater scale, perhaps a theory such as this could make things like “uncertainty” seem a lot less menacing if I replace them with words like “trust”.
I call this new method of handling things, “Plan Be”.
And while I still appreciate and can never fully let go of my organized ways of handling things, I’m pretty sure it is possible to find some sort of balance. it definitely seems like it’s worth a shot. I mean, who am I to question millions of years of biological evolution, right?
You can find the full text of the “Anarchy as Management Style” article, here!
Your fellow be-ing,
Carla
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