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Thank y'all!
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This is going to be a motivational speech.
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Because imagine my motivation standing
between this strong, healthy crowd --
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and lunch.
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(Laughter)
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I'm @Falkvinge on twitter.
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Feel free to quote me if I say something
memorable, stupid, funny, whatever.
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I love seeing my name on twitter.
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So hi! I'm Rick.
I'm a politician.
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I'm sorry.
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How many in here have heard
of the Swedish Pirate Party before?
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Let's see a show of hands.
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Okay, that's practically everybody.
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Probably due to the fact that
we are Sweden's neighbor.
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I frequently ask how many have heard
of any other political party
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and there's always just
scattered hands in the audience
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compared to this first question
which is one-half to two-thirds.
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This is actually the first time ever
that does not match.
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It was practically everybody.
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So, for those who haven't heard of us.
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Well, the Pirate Party, we love the net.
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We love copying and sharing and
we love civil liberties.
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For that, some people call us pirates.
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Probably in an attempt to make us
bow our heads and feel shame.
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That didn't work very well.
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We decided to stay
and tell about it instead.
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And so in 2006,
I founded a new political party.
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I led it for its first five years
and the European elections.
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The last European elections, we became
the largest party
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and the most coveted
youth demographic, sub 30.
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And what's interesting is we did that
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on less than one percent
of the competition's budget.
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We had a campaign budget
total of 50,000 Euros.
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They had six million between them
-- and we beat them.
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That gave us a cost-efficiency advantage
of over two orders of magnitude.
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And I'm gonna share the secret recipe
of how we did that.
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We developed swarm methodologies.
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And they can be applied
to any business or social cause.
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Well, almost any --
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there's a small asterisk by the end
and I'll get to that, in just a minute.
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But applying these --
and we've done this dozens of times --
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we know that this works.
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We've put two people
in the European Parliament,
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we've put 45 people in various
German state parliaments,
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we're in the Icelandic Parliament,
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the Czech senate,
many, many, many more,
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local councils and as said,
we've spread to 70 countries.
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And that's not bad
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for a political movement that hasn't
even been around for a decade.
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So today we're going to talk a bit
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about how people are motivated
to be part of change,
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to be part of something bigger
than themselves.
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And how you can channel this
into an organization that harnesses
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this great power of wanting to make
the world a better place.
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And in the end, come out
a little on the better.
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When I speak to business people,
I frequently make them very upset.
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When I contradict them
and say that no,
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your employees are not
your most valuable asset.
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Your most valuable asset
is the thousands of people
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who want to work for you for free,
and you don't let them.
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They get very upset about that.
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A swarm is a congregation of
tens of thousands of volunteers
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that have chosen of their own will
to converge on a common goal.
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There's this Futurama quote:
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When push comes to shove,
you gotta do what you love --
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even if it's a bad idea.
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I mean, seriously,
what kind of idiot thinks
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they can change the world
by starting a political party?
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This kind of idiot, apparently.
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But it works!
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What you need to do is
to put a stake in the ground.
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You need to announce your goal.
Just say I want to accomplish this,
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I'm going to do this.
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And it doesn't need to be very costly.
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My announcement was just
two lines in a chat channel.
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Hey look, the Pirate Party has
its website up now after New Years
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and the address.
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That was all the advertising I ever did.
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The next time I had several hundred
activists wanting to work with us.
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When you provide
such a focus point,
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a swarm intelligence emerges.
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When people can rally to a flag.
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And that's what gives you this
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two orders of magnitude
of cost-efficiency.
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It's a huge advantage --
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you're running circles around
all the legacy organizations.
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And there are four goals that
need to be fulfilled in your goal
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in order for this to work.
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These four criteria are that
your goal must be:
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tangible, credible, inclusive and epic.
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Let's take a look at them.
It needs to be tangible.
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A lot of people say, well, you know,
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you should make the world
a better place or, yeah,
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we should all feel good now.
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Not going to work.
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You need a binary.
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Are we there yet or
are we not there yet?
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It needs to be credible.
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Somebody seeing the project plan
that you're posting needs to see that,
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yes, this project plan will take us
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from where we are to
where we want to be.
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You need to break it down into
sub-goals that each by themselves
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are seen as do-able and when you
add the sub-goals together,
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we've gone to where we want.
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It needs to be --
and this is where it gets exciting
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in terms of working swarm wise --
It needs to be inclusive.
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Anybody who sees this project plan
needs to immediately say,
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"I want to do this -- and there's my spot."
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And they will be able to jump
right into the project and
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start working on it
without asking anybody's permission,
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and that is exactly what'll happen.
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And, last but not least,
it needs to be epic.
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It needs to energize people.
It needs to electrify people --
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shoot for the moon!
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On second thought,
don't shoot for the moon,
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we've already been there --
shoot for Mars!
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In contrast, you will never be able
to get a volunteer swarm forming
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around making the most correct
tax audit ever.
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Doesn't electrify people.
Go to Mars.
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A lot of people kind of balk
at the obstacles.
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We're going to climb a huge mountain.
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So how do you motivate
people to do that?
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Well, it turns out,
that obstacles are not the problem.
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Not knowing the obstacles
is the problem.
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If you know how high the mountain is,
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you know exactly
what it takes to scale it.
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We know exactly how far away Mars is
and what it takes to get there.
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If you can plan it like a project,
you can plan what resources
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you need and you can execute it,
exactly like a project.
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Let's see: we're going to Mars,
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we need two dozen
volunteer rocket scientists,
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one dozen volunteer metallurgists,
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some crazy dude who will make
rocket fuel in his backyard and so on.
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When you can list the resources,
you know what you need to get there.
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When you know what you need
to get there, you can go there.
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And the next thing is to encourage
this development of a swarm intelligence,
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which is where
the cost efficiency comes in.
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There's a TED Talk on motivation
that debunks that we work for money,
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and it presents science on how
we're really motivated by three things,
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in terms of larger creative tasks,
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when we work for something
bigger than ourselves.
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We work for autonomy,
mastery and purpose.
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We've covered purpose already,
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as in, working for something bigger,
tangible, inclusive, credible and epic.
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So, where that motivation talk ends,
and what it doesn't answer is,
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how do you build an organization
that harnesses this motivational power.
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And this is where
working swarm wise comes in,
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this is where
swarm intelligence comes in.
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Turns out that there are three factors
that you optimize for --
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and each of these are in complete opposite
to what you learn at a business school,
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but it works.
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We know it works.
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We have people in many, many
parliaments to prove it.
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Those three factors are:
speed, trust and scalability.
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We optimize for speed by
cutting bottlenecks out of the loop,
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cutting them out of the decision loop.
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That means cutting yourself
out of the decision loop,
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which can be hard,
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but you've got to communicate
your vision so passionately,
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so strongly, that everybody knows
what the goal is and can find something,
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some step that takes the movement
just a little bit closer to that goal.
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And when tens of thousands of people
do that on a weekly basis,
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you become an unstoppable force.
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We had a three-person rule
in our organization.
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If three self-identified volunteers
in the movement we're in agreement
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that something was good for the movement,
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they had the green light
from the highest office to go ahead
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and act in the name of the organization,
including spending resources.
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When you talk about
this kind of empowerment
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to traditional business people,
they think you belong in a zoo,
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but you know what,
I led this organization for five years,
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there were 50,000 registered members
and many, many more anonymous activists.
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It was not abused once.
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Everybody had the key
to the treasure chest.
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It was not abused one single time.
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Turns out when you give people
the keys to the castle,
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and look them in the eye
and say, "I trust you,"
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they step up to the plate.
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And that's a beautiful thing
to see happen.
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Obviously, not everything went
according to plan,
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but that's a different thing.
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We made mistakes.
We should expect mistakes.
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If you're pioneering something,
that means you must, by definition,
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venture into the unknown.
When you're trying the unknown,
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somethings won't go as planned --
that's part of the definition
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of venturing into the unknown.
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To find the great, you must allow
mistakes to happen,
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so you must communicate
that we expect somethings to go wrong
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to create a risk-positive environment.
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Therefore we optimize for iteration speed.
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Meaning that, we try, we fail,
we try again, we fail faster,
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we fail better, we try again,
we fail better again.
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Maybe after we've tried 15 times,
we've mastered some specific subject,
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so you want to minimize the time
it takes to try those 15 times.
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We optimize on trust.
We encourage diversity.
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You need to communicate
your vision so strongly
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so that anyone can translate it
into their own context
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because language is an incredibly strong
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inclusionary and exclusionary
social marker.
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This one brand fits all message
-- forget it!
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That's what they teach you
at business school.
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It doesn't work.
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Or at least, it doesn't give you
the cost efficiency advantage
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of working swarm wise.
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This leads to a lot of different
approaches tried in parallel
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in different social groups who try out
different methods of working
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toward the goal,
some of them will work,
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but in order to find the great ones,
you need this diversity.
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And you need to communicate
that we need that diversity.
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If somebody on this side does not
understand what those guys are doing,
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that's okay because we all trust
each other to work
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for the better of the movement.
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And it's okay that I don't understand
their social context.
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I'm not expected to --
I understand my social context.
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I contribute with something I know.
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Make people aware of this diversity.
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Finally, scalability.
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Get feet on the ground.
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Again, in business school, they teach
you to use a lean organization.
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Forget that, just scale up
the organization from the get-go.
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Start with 10,000 empty boxes
and an org chart covering down
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to every minor city.
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When you have lots and lots
of small responsibilities in such
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a scaffolding that supports the swarm,
supports the activists, you'll find that
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these boxes in the org charts are getting
filled in quite rapidly,
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and they start to get filled in beyond
your horizon with people
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you've never heard of.
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And so, this swarm keeps growing
to tens of thousands of people,
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each taking on something small
with very, very decentralized mandate
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to act on the organization.
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And this is when a
swarm intelligence emerges.
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This is when you have this beehive logic
where everybody knows what's to be done.
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Everybody is taking their own
small steps towards it.
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So the swarm starts to act
as a coherent organism.
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And it's amazing to watch.
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This is when you're awarded
by the cost efficiency advantage
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over your competitors
by two orders of magnitude.
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Two orders of magnitude.
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This is not just a silver bullet.
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So we've been talking a lot about
the big picture today.
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You can use these swarm methods
for a lot of stuff.
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Do you want to change the world?
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Do you want to bring clean water
to a billion people?
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Teach three billion people to read?
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Maybe you're into social change;
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you want to introduce
unconditional basic income.
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Or maybe you want to take
humanity to Mars.
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You can do this using these methods.
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You can do this.
It's about leadership.
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It's about deciding what you want to do
and telling it to the world.
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Because no matter whether you think
you can or cannot change the world,
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no matter whether you think
you can or cannot change the world,
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you are probably right.
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So one question I want everybody here
to ask themselves today is --
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the observation that change doesn't
just happen, somebody makes it happen --
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do you want to be that person?
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Do you want to be that person?
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And then one last thing:
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There's one component more
that's required to work swarm wise
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that I haven't mentioned yet.
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And that is fun.
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This goes beyond just enjoying your job,
this goes beyond having
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a pinball machine in the office.
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Because this is actually required
to succeed in a swarm wise scenario.
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This is required to succeed to get
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that cost efficiency advantage
of two orders of magnitude.
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For the reason that you need
to attract volunteers.
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And people, in this aspect,
are rather predictable.
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People will go to other people
who are having fun.
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In contrast, they will walk an extra mile
to avoid people who are not having fun.
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So, having fun is more than having
a pinball machine in the office.
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It's an absolute and
unavoidable requirement
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for organizational and operation success
when you're working swarm wise.
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So, in summary,
a recipe for a swarm organization
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using these motivation methods
to a huge competitive advantage.
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Your goal: It needs to be tangible,
credible, inclusive and epic.
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Your organization needs to be optimized
for speed, trust and scalability.
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You need to enjoy yourselves.
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And that will reward you with
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two orders of magnitude
of cost efficiency advantage.
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Thank you