Spontaneous OrderWhen dealing with adversity, spontaneous self-organization can often be the most effective way to succeedBy Joe Celko I was working at a company in Austin, Texas, which has since been downsized, that had an orientation program that lasted several months. It consisted of numerous team-building exercises that corporate consultants and elementary school teachers love to invent. The company was just starting to get older employees into the mix because before the average age was less than 25. Still, just to be safe, we "industrial hires" (a term that means "old farts who had other jobs before") were put in one group so we wouldn't scare the kids. Some of the exercises were just weird to me. I skipped the dude ranch trip that involved a horseback ride in 100 degree weather, even though I would have looked good when I died on the trail in my black three-piece suit. SCAVENGING FOR ORGANIZATIONOne particularly memorable event was a scavenger hunt that ranged all over the company and the city. Each team received disposable cameras and a scavenger list, but no instructions on how to conduct the hunt. Some of the younger teams spent time trying to decide who would lead. Then the leaders tried to decide what assignments to make. The young employees wanted to impress the graders with their leadership ability. But instead of leadership ability, I saw the "male aggressive behavior" that sometimes comes with being younger than 25. Other young teams behaved like a pack of cats, each person doing their own thing regardless of what everyone else was doing. Well, what did you expect? Geeks often don't want leaders, and some geeks are borderline sociopaths. In the 1970s, a survey taken by a Georgia State University professor rated employees on a scale from 1 to 10 for certain psychological characteristics such as the need for approval and the need for social interactions. The higher the score, the greater the need, and a score of 5 was average or expected. Most employees were at 4, 5, or 6, as expected, but the computer department personnel tested out at 2 on the need for social interactions. A score of 1 would be a serious mental case. Many of the older teams immediately self-organized. People called out what they could do, a command post was set up to coordinate the team, and people started working. Someone asked who had cell phones, and people exchanged their numbers. Someone else asked who had cars and who had city maps. There was no vying for power at one extreme or dissolving into disconnected units doing their own thing in isolation at the other. THE POWER OF SELF-ORGANIZATIONA lot of this spontaneous order recently took place after the terrorist attacks in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. People volunteered to donate blood all over the United States without any centrally organized plan. Within the first two weeks, dozens of American companies — software companies, management consultant firms, data recovery companies, and many others — offered to furnish their services, products, and even cash to companies that suffered damages or losses in the World Trade Center attack at no cost or obligation. In many cases, these were competitors helping each other. Game theory explains the mathematics of such situations. You can build simulations of cooperation within social systems on your computer. Spontaneous organization is not authoritarianism (the tyranny of the few) because there is no central power. It's not democracy (the tyranny of the many) because there is no voting. Each member makes a decision on his or her own and proceeds to act on it without any instructions from a power that exists outside themselves. I wish there was a magic way to teach that kind of self-organization to people. The world would be a better place. Joe Celko [71062.1056@compuserve.com] is an independent consultant in Austin, Texas and the author of Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL Programming (Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1999). |
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