Spider followers need an extra push

A spider organization, first coined by Ori Brafman in The Spider and the Starfish, is an organization where a tiny group holds authority over the entire organization’s power and decision-making. The test of the spider organization is, if your top leaders were to disappear (the head), what would happen to the rest (the body)?

A “spider follower” is someone who has spent enough of their lives in spider organizations that their behavior has been shaped by the system. Spider followers have one or more of these thoughts engrained in their brains:

A major obstacle to an organization moving from spider to starfish are the spider follower who’ve been innoculated into needing authorization from above to take action. Therefore a leader who wants to move his organization from a spider to a starfish will need to re-bend his spider followers to operate as starfish followers.

Things a leader might do to help spider followers:

Make Consequences Visible

Spider followers expect that, if they make a poor decision, their leaders will be the one to deliver a speech and some consequences. When the leader grants them more autonomy to make decisions, the leader needs to also shift the spider follower’s perspective about consequences. Instead of the leader’s approval/disapproval being the measure of a good/bad decision, the spider follwer must start measuring their decisions by the impact it has on their colleagues. It will be their partners, not their boss, who determines good decision-making in a starfish, and a leader can coach spider followers to consider their impact by asking questions and pushing spider followers to collaborate with their peers instead of giving direct approval/disapproval.