10 Simple Rules for Leadership Without Formal Authority

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2024-09-25 20:30:02

[To the initial contributors from the Community Call: We have taken the notes from the call, interpreted them, and come up with this “10 Simple Rules” style piece on leading projects in the absence of formal authority. Please take a look and edit any and all parts of it– this did not take us long, and we are not at all married to the list of rules or the descriptions. We welcome additions, revisions, exclusions, wholesale destruction… anything that better captures our conversation and will be useful to the broader open science community.]

This set of simple rules is applicable to open organizations that rely on contributors who may have other jobs or responsibilities, may work across various organizations, and are not obligated to contribute to the open effort. In managing these organizations, a substantial amount of “cat herding” is involved: Contributors and community members are not working under a formal authority structure that enables compliance-gaining to be as simple as rules and policies. Instead, a bottom-up approach to leadership is needed, where behavior is encouraged via alternative methods to “stick and carrots.”

These rules are imagined as rules for leaders working across organizations, though they can also be useful within larger organizations when no formal authority is held over participants. Inside of organizations it is important to be aware of existing power structures and how this kind of leading without formal authority can sometimes cause friction with those structures. Furthermore, leading in this way is very difficult: It requires resources, skill development, sensitivity to contributors’ and community members’ realities, navigation of existing organizational structures and social networks, and other demands. These “rules” are therefore more like guidelines or a toolkit to consult in developing this method of leadership.