Cellular Organization

‘-archy’ comes from the Greek word meaning ‘rule, power or authority’, and ‘hier’ comes from the Greek word meaning ‘sacred’. When the word hierarchy was first used in the church, it literally meant ‘sacred rule’. We no longer see our hierarchical leaders in politics or business as sacred (though sometimes, when I see the cult of leadership, especially in the US, I wonder), but we have kept the term to describe the power structure.

Two other suffixes, also from the Greek, are used almost interchangeably with ‘-archy’, but neither really refers to power: ‘-cracy’ means ‘government’ and -opoly’ means ‘seller’. So a monopoly is a system with one seller, an oligopoly a system with just a few. And democracy is government of the people while autocracy is government by one person. The fact that we use the three terms that mean ‘power’, ‘government’ and ‘seller’ almost interchangeably shows the perverse degree to which, in our modern corporatist world, the three terms have become virtually synonymous. The government and the sellers (corporations) have all the power. Our ‘learned helplessness’ keeps us from thinking it was ever, or ever could be, any other way.

This essay is about power, and about how we give it, take it, and share it. In ancient Greece, rule was by divine right, while authority was vested, and both held power. Democracy, in its earliest form, gave ‘the people’ authority over dealings with each other, but not power over those in the true hierarchy, the religious and political leaders who called themselves ‘lords’ with no sense of irony. Democracy was rules for the children in the schoolyard, and granted no authority over those who actually ran the school.

Most of the wars fought since then have been either religious wars (wars between true hierarchies) or revolutionary wars (wars aimed at transferring power from the true hierarchies to the merchant class, and later to ‘the people’). The problem with such ‘-archies’ is that as they get bigger they get more fragile they become. Malcolm Gladwell, in an article called The Cellular Church* about preacher and Purpose-Driven Life author Rick Warren, put it this way:

Gladwell even quotes philosopher Dick Wesley that calls such cells “intentional communities”.

How big is a cell? As big or small as its self-selected members choose it to be, though the bigger-is-weaker rule would seem to limit it to much smaller size than the 150 people we are (according to social network gurus) able to accommodate in a personal network. The key to the cell, it appears, is the strength of strong links — members are each others’ families, best friends, work colleagues, and everyone in the cell likes (loves?) everyone else in the cell. That makes an astonishing bond, that, if it’s cultivated, can be indomitable, and powerful. What mystifies Gladwell is how Warren and others can manage to harness that power, essentially without hierarchy. It requires a lot of work to reach and steer a million scattered cells of ten people than a single televangelist audience of ten million. But if you can do it, it’s a much more powerful network. The key to reaching these cells seems to be providing them with a flexible template of activities attuned to their values, and letting them self-form and self-manage. The multiple short chapters of Warren’s books serve as a menu of choices for his church’s sells to choose from, apply to their own shared context, and learn from. Most of the learning is from each other.

Surprisingly, Gladwell doesn’t discuss how the cellular organization model fits with the Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen in his Tipping Point. Does it fit at all, or has Warren found a way to change the world that is more, er, democratic?

Next Gladwell tells us what Warren is doing now. He’s reverse tithing 90% of his income from books and donations to third world humanitarian work, especially the scourge of AIDS in Africa. And guess what?

So now he’s taking his cellular organization and vowing to use it to end world poverty and disease. Now that’s power.

Aha!

* Not currently online, but keep an eye out on gladwell.com