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PROMISCUITY FOR THE MIND
Music to Follow: When the saints go marching in Louis Armstrong; Badluram ka Badan Assam regiment; Both - YouTube
A. Leaders Lead. Followers follow. If there are no followers what do leaders lead?
B. Followership is Critical. Maybe more critical than leadership!
C. Followership becomes critically important as organization size reaches ONE!
From the first 5 Vectors: ( https://bit.ly/3fP4h45 )
1. Followership is Mathematically Sound
2. Leadership for Leadership's sake is Irrelevant, in fact, dangerous
3. Apprenticing as a Follower is a basis for Sound Leadership.
4. Followers can amplify results that build on the work and vision of leaders
5. Followership enables powerful, expert, oversight without which Leaders could scarcely operate.
The next 5 Vectors (https://bit.ly/31e8VVp)
6. Followership is rewarding too.
7. There can be bad leaders, but every follower is an ace.
8. Followership is in reality challenging enough and tough
9. Followership is a compulsory algorithm as task risk levels rise
10. Leaders have to fight to get there - a follower has few enemies.
And the last in the Followership series, the final 5 Vectors.
11. Followership is Guaranteed – Leadership is a lottery Apart from qualities for leadership, there is also a large dose of luck needed. Followership is something one can choose immediately.
12. Followership is Algorithmic: It took years of painstaking effort to figure out how to raise Salmon in fish farms. Once the Algorithm was in place, it was a relatively easy task to repeat it, without wondering about insight, breakthroughs and research. A vast proportion of Salmon sold worldwide today are farmed. The Algorithm is now so easy to replicate that there is, I kid you not, a hugely successful Norwegian salmon Fish Farm in the middle of an Industrial Park in Dubai, United Arab emirates. Yes, right in the middle of the Great Arabian Desert, about as far from the icy fjords of Norway as you can think of. That the power of Algorithmic replication available.
Jane Goodal, a personal icon, spent years in Gombe, researching Chimpanzees. The moment when David Graybeard accepted a Red Palm Nut from her hand, placed it on the ground and squeezed her hand as a sign of reassurance is a moment in Ethnobiology so incredible, it is celebrated as a bronze sculpture.
https://bit.ly/32e369I.
You can research more about chimpanzees right away building on Jane Goodall's work or choose a new subject – say- mantis shrimp and kiss 30 years goodbye!
“MONOTREMES OVIPAROUS, OVUM MEROBLASTIC" - platypuses lay eggs. This, arguably the most famous of telegrams, confirmed something about Platypuses that needed thousands of them to be killed and dissected at various stages of life, especially pregnancy. You have the Algorithm at hand.
When you look at a Unicycle, it is impossible to believe that it can be ridden at all. But the Algorithm developed by thousands of riders helps you to believe and eventually learn to ride one, perhaps. This is an example of how Algorithms do not just enable easy followership, they make it happen. The example most people are familiar with is Roger Bannister running the mile under 4 minutes in 1954. Thought impossible till that moment, now well over 1400 runners have broken it !!! Algorithms are Magic Potions for followers.
13. SOLID followership could just be better than Garden Variety Leadership.
The graphic explains it all.
14. Followership don't need no third party endorsements: Leadership needs lots of bolstering. Appointment. Media. Your Industry. Commentators. Critics. Followers!!! Your mom! Scholarly journals. Many, many third-party endorsements are needed before one has arrived as a Leader. In sharp contrast, followership deals directly with 'customers'.
Leadership is most often a 'bottleneck' position. For a process to reach its conclusion there is often a bottleneck and, usually, a person lording it over that function. Investment Banking, Healthcare, Law, sports...all have positions where there is asymmetric power wielded. These positions used to be earned. Perhaps the most scintillating global example is that of Mahatma Gandhi. Without an official position, title, appointment, sect, group, or whatever affiliation, he was able to lead hundreds of millions. They would listen and follow, with love and affection, each of his exhortations. Today such positions are by appointment. CEO, CXO, Political Positions, Investment Bankers..bankers in general….And it is axiomatic that those who 'gift' such positions of 'Leadership" will expect their pound of flesh. Ergo third-party endorsement and all the risks it carries of making and breaking someone. ‘Leaders’ are often beholden to their leaders, who in turn are in the sway of leaders above them, and to mix a metaphor, it is tortoises all the way up !!!!
Followers need only one vote – the customer. By the way, 'Leadership' and its addicts are also following a 'meme'. The Leadership Meme. And hence, no matter what, they too are followers!
15. Followership is cyclic and an iron-clad law of nature: For sure there is a food chain and for sure it is in the shape of a pyramid. What is not so evident is that the ‘top’ of the pyramid is connected directly to the bottom. So the grass is eaten by deer by the tiger by microbes all over again. It is a law of Nature for the simple reason that's how life on earth is sustainable. And this is not just biology, it is so with Physics and Chemistry and everything else we know. Why would leadership be exempt? Not even Mathematics which is derived from and describes nature is outside this chain of life and knowledge. Why should anything else be?
Followership and Leadership are dichotomic reflections of each other. Like Yin and Yang, Male and Female, +&-, Electron and Proton. But then that’ exactly what we started with 14 points back !!!!
S. Ram Kumar is an Author, Speaker, Agent-Provocateur, UniCylist and Woodworker. lokilet@luckfogic.com
Illustrations by Lloyd Lawrence Lobo. https://www.instagram.com/meterchai.
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