A Multidisciplinary Lens on Burning Man

Burning Man is counter to the mainstream management practices of Silicon Valley. I have attended so many gatherings of humans over the years and across the globe - been at countless conferences, musical events, gaming events, religious gatherings, county fairs, etc.

But, Burning Man is fundamentally different from my past experiences! The principles that underpin the gathering and philosophy behind it is fascinating, to say the least.

~70000 people meet in the middle of a desert known for high temperatures & dust storms, build a city, have fun, self-sustain themselves for a week and leave no trace behind at the end of it all.

Here is a small glimpse of what happens in that week…

In many ways, I’d compare it to riding a bike. Reading about Burning Man is like reading books about how to ride a bike. But, nothing compares to actually riding a bike! I’m positive that your opinions and preconceived ideas about Burning Man are radically transformed when you actually attend it.

Burning Man calls itself as ‘a network of people’ inspired by the values reflected in the Ten Principles and united in the pursuit of a more creative and connected existence in the world. Here are its Ten Principles:

Beyond that, the founders didn’t write down anymore rules or regulations. The ten principles were also written down only after several years of the gathering. More importantly, they were written in a descriptive manner (as to what behaviors were observed to be valued at Burning Man) and not in a prescriptive manner.

I’m sure that Burning Man has been interpreted many times in the past. But, here is my multidisciplinary lens on Burning Man. It is such a kaleidoscopic gathering where no two experiences are the same! Let me begin this post with one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite systems thinkers, Russell Ackoff:

When I first read the Ten Principles, “Immediacy” stood out for me. I could guess what the first nine meant - but, I couldn’t guess what the last one meant and why it was SO important to be on the Ten Principles. Here’s what it says:

Wow! This is true - you can’t write down the philosophy of Burning Man. You have to experience it. At Burning Man, action is the fundamental unit of meaning. Not written words. That’s why the immediate experience is prioritized. I truly felt it when I was there…

For example, there were camps gifting free food and drinks (they need a food license and have to be compliant with prevailing law at all times). Most of the people who worked there did it with a warm and welcoming smile. They truly wanted us to have a good time - bartenders would strike a conversation, make jokes and get the good vibes going. People fix your broken bike for free, etc.

No money! No tipping! These human interactions were not mediated by money.

This got me thinking, how many people would call someone a leader if they were not paid to do so? Now, let’s take this idea to the workplace…

Great leaders ‘read the room’ and more importantly ‘walk the gemba’! They truly want to create an environment in which people can come and do the best work of their lives. They don’t rob the autonomy and agency of their people - they value their true lived experience at the company.

They don’t just manage by numbers. They are keenly aware of the emotions and passions of their people - they can intuitively read their facial expressions and body language.

In large corporations, people on the ground have very little autonomy and agency. Policies are set in stone someplace else - but, they are oblivious to the sheer variety of ‘edge cases’ on the ground that don’t fit into their “ideal” model of getting things done. The person on the ground becomes helpless and lose their agency even though they want to do the right thing - for a customer or even a fellow employee.

Do folks in the C-Suite realize how autonomy and agency has been robbed from their people on the ground?

Silicon Valley is “Efficiency First”! But, nature is not. As the saying goes, a flower is a weed with a marketing budget. It may not be efficient, but it is certainly effective.

Nature doesn’t “optimize” everything - it builds redundancies. Take the example of our own body: we have two lungs, two kidneys, two eyes and so on.

One of the dominant paradigms from the industrial era is the idea that management’s primary focus was to do things in a predictable/repeatable fashion at an ever increasing rate of efficiency and scale. But, complexity destroyed that paradigm.

Innovation necessitates slack in the system. But, efficiency eliminates it. We are squeezing efficiencies across all layers of abstraction - individual, team, department, business unit, cost center, etc. Story points based “velocity” metrics, “Say vs Do” metrics, Packed calendars, Profit margin, etc.

Let’s look at the individual level as an example: Nobody should have any free time! The modern day irony of “knowledge workers” not having time to sit down and think!

Some of our best ideas come to us while taking a stroll or in the shower. Thinking requires free time without being bothered by others.The first idea that pops into my head is usually wrong. But, the more I think about it, it becomes less wronger.

Having a packed day with no free time is certainly efficient, but we have to question if it is really effective.

In our blind chasing of efficiency, we also try to standardize and centralize tooling and processes. This in turn results in less and less innovation.

But, Burning Man doesn’t prioritize efficiency. I mean, carrying tons of gear to the middle of a desert just for one week and carrying it all back by itself is not a very efficient activity in the first place.

But, the end result is a lot of creativity, beauty, art and more variety in general. Does that mean there can be no efficiency or process improvements? Absolutely not!

Let’s talk about those two topics next...

Cybernetics is interested in all of the possibilities of a phenomenon (i.e., what all it can do) rather than what the phenomenon actually is. The possibilities align with the number of possible states of the phenomenon.

Stafford Beer explained variety as the measure of complexity of a phenomenon. The more distinctions an observer can make, the higher the perceived complexity.

The external environment always has a much higher variety than the controller. Therefore, in order to manage a complex situation, the controller has to be able to come up with enough variety to match the variety of the situation. This is also known as Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety, a central idea in cybernetics. Simply put, Ashby’s Law states:

In most organizations, all work is centrally planned and managed. Central planning has two main problems - it is central and it is planning.

There is not much central planning at Burning Man. Each theme camp manage their own, while being aligned with the Ten Principles. Each camp make up their own rules and schedules. Some have shifts for its members and some don’t. It is the passion and the purpose that unites them. The focus is on the experience people are having.

This reminds me of Switzerland which is arguably the most bottoms-up government country in the world. Switzerland is extremely decentralized and people & the cantons govern themselves. Local municipality is very powerful and you’d be surprised to find that some people may not even know who their President is but can tell who their local leader is. Given that everyone in the town knows the local leader, they also have skin-in-the-game. If they misbehave, people can vote him/her out.

When I asked around for camps and how to be part of one, the most repeated advice was to join a camp that aligns well with your interests and passion. The act of doing something must be its own reward. You should not be doing it for status or money.

When people with autonomy and agency pursue their passion, the amount of creativity unleashed is phenomenal. The end result is an experience that delights - this is something that no central planner can pull off. Art cars, mutant vehicles, fireworks, laser lights, etc. You have no idea what you’ll bump into next at Burning Man.

The Burning Man culture truly belongs to those who participate in it. It is a participatory culture that invented the concept of “do-ocracy” as a formalization of this idea:

At Burning Man, authority is where information is - people on the ground have the most context and therefore are in the best position to make timely decisions and act. Compare this to the culture of Silicon Valley corporations, where information is pushed up to "authority”. Hierarchy based decision making slows down everything while the customers and the people on the ground continue to suffer.

If this is the case, who takes care of efficiency and process improvements? The people on the ground! It is them who decide what needs to be eliminated, modified, added or automated. Not a C-suite figure sitting inside an air-conditioned RV.

At Burning Man, a leader is not someone who has power, money or resources - this is a shortcut taken by mainstream management. Instead, leadership emerges from the group of people, authorizing who needs to be authorized and making decisions as required by the situation.

I will end this section with a pertinent quote from Stafford Beer, the father of Management Cybernetics:

‘Emergence’ is a fascinating concept that is discussed in both complexity sciences and systemic thinking. The whole is certainly different than the sum of the parts.

Physicists can study Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms and do experiments on them till kingdom comes and they’ll never find the property called “wetness”. But, only when they combine together as H₂O does the property emerge in water. Similarly only when you assemble the various parts of a bicycle and ride it, does the property of ‘speed' come into the picture.

Back in 1986, Larry Harvey and his friend Jerry James knock together an improvised wooden figure, drag it down to Baker beach on the Summer Solstice. They light it up, and something magical happens - a curious crowd gathers to watch it burn. That burning effigy did something to that crowd. That was not planned - it just happened.

Since then, the crowd along with the burning man culture has been growing and evolving with various emergent properties. Fast forward to today… What started as a family picnic with no philosophy behind it is now a global cultural phenomenon.

Emergence is also observed in nature - typical examples include the murmuration of starlings, ant colony behavior, etc. You can see the same in Burning Man.

For example, a random gathering of people were exploring different things on the playa. Someone started blasting music from their boombox and a few people in the crowd started to dance… But, it quickly spread and suddenly everyone started dancing, all their lights seemed to synchronize as they moved to the beat - but, none of those people pre-planned it. The order suddenly emerged out of chaos.

I’m sure the boombox guy did this at many locations and may not have been successful in pulling something off like that. Some experiments when the conditions align, turn out to be attractor states. But, unless we try we wouldn’t know.

What Burning Man encourages us is to try all kinds of weird experiments - counterintuitive and irrational ones are welcome too! That’s what we miss the most in mainstream management - the capacity to try anti-mainstream and counterintuitive ideas.

We can’t “design” for emergence. But, we can certainly work on creating the conditions for it.

While I was waiting near a porta potty for my buddy to finish his job, a guy came by and told me to go a camp nearby and that a message from the universe is waiting for me. I did.

I walked in, found a closed piece of paper card and opened it. Here is the message I got from the universe and this is now my message to you:

Life is short! Go do the thing you always wanted to do - whether it is starting a new entrepreneurial venture or climbing Mount Everest. Take Risks!

Let me also add a pertinent quote from Soren Kierkegaard:

I will finish today’s newsletter with an old Zen story. Two men come to visit a Zen teacher to inquire about moving to his village.

The first man enters and says, "I am thinking of moving to this village, how is it here?"

The teacher replies, "Well, how is your current village?" The man responds, "It's terrible, I hate it there." The Zen teacher answers, "This village is the same, you won't like it."

The second man enters and says, "I am thinking of moving to this village, how is it here?"

The teacher replies, "Well, how is your current village?" The man responds, "It's wonderful, I love it there." The Zen teacher answers, "This village is the same, you will like it."

That’s it for this week!