If you've seen or read about today's PMQs you will know that Cameron got lots of laughs for revealing that David Muir's favourite book is called "The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations". This may seem like just an effective cheap shot but it's actually a very significant thing. The full title is "The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations" and this is Amazon's synopsis of it:
"If you cut off a spider's leg, it's crippled; if you cut off it's head, it dies. But if you cut off a starfish's leg it grows a new one, and the old leg can grow into an entirely new starfish. Some organisations are just as decentralised as starfish, with no control centre or grand strategy. Think of craigslist and the original Napster, run totally by their own customers. Or Alcoholics Anonymous, which has thrived for decades as a loose network of small groups. Or even al Qaeda, which is so hard to destroy because its cells function independently. "The Starfish and the Spider", based on groundbreaking research into decentralised organisations, proves that this type of leadership is primed to change the world. Major companies like eBay, IBM, Sun, and GE are starting to decentralise, with great results. Decentralisation isn't easy for people who are used to the classic chain of commence organisation."
So the book of choice of Brown's chief strategist is about, of all things, the power of decentralisation! This "starfish approach" is antithetical to Brown's approach but central to David Cameron's. Interesting.
