Last December I read "The Starfish and the Spider" (http://www.starfishandspider.com/) and it is still noodling around in my brain. The cover caught my eye with the sub-title "The unstoppable power of leaderless organizations" -- and that's EXACTLY how I feel about One Warm Coat!
While I have the "title" of National Coordinator (and sometimes I will add the organizational title of President) I believe the project has grown because it does NOT have a leader.
More than 2,000 individual coat drives were organized last year -- and EACH coat drive has a "leader" -- someone who said "I can do that!".
Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom, the Stanford MBAs who wrote this book, made many observations about differences between a starfish and a spider. Starfish = rely on power of relationships; there is no "head" just legs, if you cut off a leg, it will regrow this part. Spiders = rigid heirarcy and top-down leadership; cut off the head, and it will die.
As I said, I'm still absorbing some of their comments -- and I'll be back to share them with you.
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