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Thank y'all!
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This is going to be a motivational speech.
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Because --
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imagine my motivation standing
between this strong, healthy crowd ...
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and lunch.
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(Laughter)
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So ...
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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 ...
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Hi! I'm Rick.
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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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OK, 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 stand tall 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.
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And the European elections,
the last European elections,
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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,
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and I'll get to that in just a minute.
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But applying these --
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and we've done this dozens of times,
we know that this works.
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We've put two people
in the European Parliament,
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we have 45 people
in various German state parliaments,
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we're in the Icelandic parliament,
the Czech senate,
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many, many, many more, local councils --
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and, as said, we've spread
to 70 countries.
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And that's not bad
for a political movement
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that hasn't even been around for a decade.
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So today we're going
to talk a bit about --
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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
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that harnesses 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 businesspeople,
I frequently make them very upset
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when I contradict them
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and say that no, 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.
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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 not a good idea."
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(Laughter)
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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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(Laughter)
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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.
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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 Year's."
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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 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,
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"Well, you know, we should make
the world a better place,"
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or, "Yeah, 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
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that, 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 subgoals
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that each by themselves
are seen as doable,
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and when you add the subgoals together,
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we've gone to where we want.
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It needs to be --
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and this is where it gets exciting
in terms of working swarmwise --
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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
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and 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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(Laughter)
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In contrast,
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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,
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you can plan what resources you need
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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 mix
rocket fuel in his backyard
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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, credible, inclusive and epic.
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So, where that motivation talk ends,
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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 swarmwise 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, so strongly,
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that everybody knows what the goal is
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and can find something, some step
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that takes the movement
just a little 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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saying that if three self-identified
volunteers in the movement
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were in agreement that something
was good for the movement,
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they had the green light
from the highest office
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to go ahead and act
in the name of the organization,
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including spending resources.
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When you talk about
this kind of empowerment
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to traditional businesspeople,
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they think you belong in a zoo.
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But you know what?
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I led this organization for five years,
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there were 50,000 registered members
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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.
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When you're trying the unknown,
some things won't go as planned.
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That's part of the definition
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 some things 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 everybody 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 --
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forget it!
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That's what they teach you
at business school -- 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 swarmwise.
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This leads to a lot of different
approaches tried in parallel
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in different social groups
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who try out different methods
of working toward the goal.
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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
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what those guys are doing,
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that's OK because we all trust each other
to work for the better of the movement.
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And it's OK 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.
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.
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Just scale up the organization
from the get-go.
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Start with 10,000 empty boxes
and an org chart
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covering down to every minor city.
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When you have lots and lots
of small responsibilities
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in such a scaffolding
that supports the swarm,
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supports the activists,
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you'll find that these boxes
in the org charts
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are getting filled in quite rapidly,
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and they start to get filled in
beyond your horizon
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with people 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
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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.
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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
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is 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 swarmwise
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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,
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this goes beyond having
a pinball machine in the office.
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Because this is actually required
to succeed in a swarmwise scenario.
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This is required to succeed
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to get 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 just
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 operational success
when you're working swarmwise.
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So, in summary --
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a recipe for a swarm organization
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using these motivational 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
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with two orders of magnitude
of cost-efficiency advantage.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)