Want to grow something fun?

Want to be part of something bigger than yourself?

Want to actually change the world?

It’s simple:

Get out of the way!

The temptation is to tightly control what happens with your dream. You think you need to be involved in every step. That if you aren’t part of it, it won’t happen. But that approach is very spider and we live in a starfish world now.

In their book, The Starfish and the Spider , authors Brafman and Beckstrom describe an interesting difference between these two creatures. If you cut the head off a spider, the spider dies. If you cut the arm off a starfish, it grows an entire new starfish. They argue that we are now in the age of the starfish, a time when networks of people will dominate, instead of the one leader who rules all approach.

They share the spread of online music as an example. In the old days, a lawsuit would have shut down a company. But ask Metallica what happened when they sued illegal downloaders? Did it stop the spread of music online? Nope. If anything, it just created new starfish because we are now more networked and more equipped to create new conversations than any other generation in history.

If you really want to have a dream be as big as it is. You have to be a starfish. You have to start it and then get out of the way and let other starfish build it faster than you ever could. The Dreamers & Builders group is a great example of that for me. I helped start the original Facebook group. When that one ended, the community built a new one and a new one and a new one. At one point, there were dozens of subgroups. I am not technically the leader of any of these. Tammy is and Randy is and Melissa is and Ryan is and a million other starfish.

A few nights ago, a guy named Jackson Tejada created the photo below with people from the singles group. Why? Because that’s what starfish do. They create. And it’s hard to find a more creative, awesome group than the #AllTheSingles group.

Want to change the world? Get out of the way.

Downton