akshay chugh

22 Apr 2026

Author: Alex Komoroske

Original Link: komoroske.com/slime-mold/

Slime Mold

My Reflections

Two kinds of cultures: top-down (military) and bottom-up (slime mold). Tech industries are the slime mold model.

Probability of success of a project in a slime mold:

What you should NOT do:

  1. Ignore it
  2. Give up individually. The problem is systemic but it is your job to do something about it.
  3. Switch to top-down
  4. Have leaders dive in to help with details. Treat it as a systemic problem, not a details problem.
  5. Aim for perfection. Make each decision absolutely perfectly.
  6. Play blame game on a person or team. Be curious, empathetic, and seek to understand.

What you CAN do:

  1. First, accept that organizations are slime molds. And that this can be a good thing. Lots of creative problem-solving comes from that. Acceptance also preserves your energy.

  2. Assume good intent always. People typically assume their own issues are systemic (“I came late because traffic”) and others’ issues are individualistic (“she came late because she doesn’t value my time”). This is the fundamental attribution error. People are inherently hard-working and want to help. Understand where they are coming from.

  3. Address friction points early. Fix the system, not the individual details of the friction. Do people not care about the project? What are the competing priorities? Is the overall strategy not aligned? Is it bandwidth? Do they need to sit together? Distrust breeds more distrust. This distrust is more common across teams in different orgs. The farther off the teams are, the more you need to set them up to reduce friction (team meetings, 1:1s, tracking, OKRs, strategy sessions, offsites).

  4. Try to structurally decouple stuff. Aim for eventual convergence.

  5. Account for slime mold headwinds :)

  6. Take smaller shots that have a path to the moon, rather than one direct shot to the moon. Risk is less, effort is less, outcome is clearer.