Leadership in Peer-to-Peer Networks

by Rod Collins

 

Traditional leadership models and their longstanding ways of thinking and acting are no longer relevant in a world that has been suddenly transformed by the digital revolution. Game-changing developments in technology have given rise to a radical new organizational model—the peer-to-peer network—that is steadily and irrevocably redefining the way that work gets done in organizations. That’s the key message in a new book by Mila Baker, Peer-to-Peer Leadership: Why the Network is the Leader. 

Baker makes a convincing argument for why informal networks have suddenly become as powerful, and in many instances, more powerful than traditional hierarchies. The traditional organizational paradigm assumes that organizations work best when they are designed as machines. Perhaps that may explain why the typical organization chart resembles a mechanical schematic. As the dominant metaphor for the Industrial Age, the machine defined the context for how the world worked for well over two centuries. One of the consequences of the pervasiveness of this metaphor is a strong belief that effective organizations need strong centralized leaders who carefully manage information and set clear directions for workers to follow. 

Over the past two decades the dominance of mechanical thinking has been progressively chipped away by a seemingly unlikely group: IT engineers. During this time, the information technology experts have created an unprecedented and pervasive architecture that has transformed the ways we process information, which we best know as the Internet. The Internet is a highly decentralized structure that is radically disrupting the ways people communicate information. Instead of a top-down broadcast structure that requires a static chain of command within the context of clear “need to know” boundaries, the dynamic nodal structure of the Internet provides everyone with open and direct access to everyone else based on a concept Baker refers to as “equipotency.” 

Equipotency is a defining principle of networks that considers all nodes within a node community as being equally privileged. Thus, while hierarchies concentrate information and decision-making in the hands of a few powerful and privileged leaders, in equipotent models, “the network itself becomes the leader as it constantly computes raw data and turns it into actionable information.” This type of shared leadership is the dynamic that drives well-known crowdsourced enterprises, such as Wikipedia and Linux. 

When power is equally distributed, the need for empowerment and building coalitions become unnecessary. Equipotency results in a natural sharing of power for the simple reason that that’s how networks work. Empowerment—the voluntary distribution of power from those in authority to those doing the work—is something that can only happen in hierarchies. Empowerment as a sustainable managerial practice is highly unreliable because it can easily be erased on the whim of a single supervisor. Equipotency, however, is permanent because it is built into the fundamental fabric of the system. Thus, for example, at W.L. Gore and Associates, the makers of Gore-Tex,  because there are no bosses, no one has the authority to curtail anyone’s access to information or full participation.  Similarly, there’s no need to build coalitions because, in networks, “work is always accomplished through coalitions.” 

Effective leadership in the twenty-first century requires the acceptance of a new paradigm that sees the world as a network, not a machine. In networks, leadership is not the prerogative of a position but rather the shared responsibility of everyone involved in self-organized collaborations. As the technological revolution continues to expand the powerful advantages of peer-to-peer networks, it will become increasingly clear that technology has transformed the noble notion that nobody is smarter or faster than everybody into a highly practical force. After reading Baker’s book, you will fully understand why those who know how to lead in this context will have an enormous advantage over those who don’t.

 

Rod Collins  (@collinsrod) is Director of Innovation at Optimity Advisors and author of Wiki Management: A Revolutionary New Model for a Rapidly Changing and Collaborative World (AMACOM Books, 2014).