Slime Mold: Embracing Silos and Autonomy as Organizational Complexity Grows

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As organizations grow in size, complexity increases, making it hard to get things done and leading to bureaucracy. This effect is a result of the number of people interacting on a project and is an inescapable reality. The conventional approach of being more heroic or throwing more coordination into the mix does not work. Instead, creating slack, accepting good enough for now, and allowing boundaries and silos can address these challenges. Autonomy and independence, paired with communication and eventual convergence, are key to managing organizational complexity.

What is up PartnerUp?!

If you try to build a product, platform, community, or ecosystem like an engineer or architect, you will fail. Every time.

If you view it as a garden, you just might succeed.

Alex Komoroske is one of the most fascinating thinkers in business, and his wildly popular illustrated and emoji-based decks on how to build a platform ecosystem and how large companies are like slime molds have created breakthroughs for startups large and small.

We talk about whether all this abstract stuff is just a load of bull, why it has to come from the bottom up, and how to put it to use. We also dive into the problem of measurement, and why sometimes the most important stuff is what can’t be measured - and how to convince your boss of this!

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Mentioned on today’s episode:

Gardening Platforms:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1cY95dRixFho0pMIlrEFcGL_XKVy9vnE4NGOD6TQMj50/view#slide=id.ge22ac2ec66_0_94

Slime Molds: https://komoroske.com/slime-mold/

FLUX Collective: https://read.fluxcollective.org/