Non-Hierarchical Modes of Scaling DAOs
Discussion
By Scott Moore and Maxwell Kanter:
"Revisiting the idea of lore, is an interesting way to see how we might increase the chances of finding alignment within groups as they scale.
Stories and lore have existed as long as humans have. Fundamentally, as a species, we exist through and within stories. Stories guide and ground us through all aspects of life. Our sense of self is cemented through the stories we tell ourselves, and our sense of community is cemented by the stories we tell each other. In DAOs, like all organizations, stories are the lifeblood that remind us of who we are and why we are here. There is a vast literature around the organizational and psychological impact of stories, which web3 should deeply study.
Among other things, lore, stories, and the collective memories that shape them are able to replicate the emotional and metaphysical power of close relationships, and facilitate sense-making through world-building. Importantly, rather than MBA-style top-down mission-statements,7 stories in DAOs are crafted by and for the community. These stories retain their memetic power, and guide us through the darkness and towards the light like a compass magnetically pulled towards the vibes.
Fundamentally, these modes of scaling are often non-hierarchical. We all collectively author our stories by setting our shared meaning (mission), rhythms (ritual), and collective memories (lore) without direct assistance from external authority. We, as community members, craft and solidify lore together, build our worlds, and by doing so we lay the foundation for everything else.
More importantly, we do this not to drive some abstract notion of business value, but rather to manage our own mental models around what we want to see in the world (world-building). In the case of DAOs in particular, we can then use our own shared currencies9 to take the actions directly related to the world we've imagined (e.g., creating a solarpunk future). Each of these elements helps keep alignment in place a little bit longer, past Dunbar's number, and helps us build our castles in the sky.
Another often ignored aspect of even nascent online communities, especially DAOs, is some degree of clear leadership -- a person or group that can help shape the frame to allow the community to recognize its own potential.
David Ehrlichman has written extensively about impact networks and leadership within these groups, and he believes that leaders in decentralized organizations begin to embrace a network mindset, whereby they cease working in isolation and begin to focus on building meaningful relationships and sharing resources. As Ehrlichman writes, "Fundamentally, the role of network leaders is to help diverse groups find the shared purpose that unites them, to foster self-organization, and to coordinate the actions that emerge so that they inform and reinforce one another." Rather than establishing themselves as the center point of an organization, network leaders decisively work towards establishing relationships between community members, further extending informal alignment.
Leaders in DAOs, typically, are just the people with more context. In more traditional organizations, context is generally reserved for the C-suite, and if you're a delivery person for Amazon, Jeff Bezos won't be sharing his meeting notes with you. DAOs, in our minds, aren't like that at all. Context is available for anyone who cares enough to look into it, and this is a powerful mechanism that allows anyone to become a leader practically overnight. In DAOs, "everyone is a leader, deciding for themselves to follow the group's evolutionary purpose."
(https://www.forefront.market/blog/internet-native-organizations)