Ask everyone to vote on their favourite ice cream, you’ll most likely end up with vanilla.
Similar to design by committee: a project that has many designers involved but no unifying plan or vision
Coordination Headwind
Source: How Organizations are like Slime Molds by Alex Komoroske
In small orgs, individuals matter a lot, but when the org gets larger the system (structure + dynamics) dominate. Consensus is especially difficult in larger groups.
Bottom-up orgs (slime mold model)
- unpredictable
- uncontrollable (can influence via incentives)
- individual autonomy
- fluid
- messy
- resilient
- exploratory
Top-down orgs (military model)
- predictable
- controllable
- cog in the machine
- structured
- efficient
- fragile
- exploitative
On avoiding Vanilla Ice Cream
Related to how to better fund moonshot things
Setting an appropriate council size so that if one person proposes an idea and the others don’t agree, they can still drive that decision. obviously based on high trust and should not dictate entire budget → have a consensus (more publicly governed) budget and an aconsensus budget (core council budget)