The Startup Community Way

CHAPTER NINETHE ILLUSION OF CONTROL

Startup Community Way Principle

Startup communities can be guided and influenced but not controlled. Instead of approaching a startup community from the top down, it should be seeded with the right conditions to emerge from the bottom up. Efforts to control people, activities, and information in startup communities are futile at best and destructive at worst.

Complex systems are puzzling, but what makes them puzzling is also what makes them so valuable. Herein lies the challenge: our human minds desire the security of feeling all-knowing and all-controlling. We want to believe that we fully understand what's happening around us, that we can apply our skills to solve our challenges, and that we are in control of our destiny.

Compounding the innate human desire to be the master of our destiny is a system of hierarchical management deeply ingrained for generations. Developed more than a century ago by efficiency consultant and industrialist Frederick Winslow Taylor, the field of scientific management promoted specialization, tight control of production, and top-down management. ¹ Taylorism, as it became known, was popularized in the industrial age and increased after World War II. Its legacy continues to this day.

Taylorism is the essence of complicated thinking. So is the “Masters of the Universe” syndrome. ² But, we live in an increasingly complex world, not a complicated one. Not only are these theories no longer sufficient, but they're ...