This is not an original thought with me -- I believe I read it someplace, or possibly inferred it from a comedian's routine -- but I like it, anyway.
Whenever someone says that they've captured, killed, or otherwise negated the 'number two man' in AQ, it never seems to throw that organization into disarray. You don't see a spokesterrorist on Al Jazzy saying that they'll be having a board meeting to designate a replacement, and in the meanwhile the negated person's deputy will stand in for them. Now, thats silly, of course, but the underlying concept -- I believe that. It makes sense, in a federation like AQ, where cells align and divest fluidly, that losing one person, or even several, is not going to jam up the organization -- because, in a strict sense, there is no organization, just a group of allied teams, all with the same general goals (dare I say: mission statement?) and their own methods of achieving them. I don't know if it'd be fair to call this a masterpiece of decentralization -- perhaps more a manifestation of flocking theory -- but it's useful, either way.
What does this suggest for the effectiveness of tightly coupled organizations?
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