For organizations the most effective, creative and enjoyable answer may be - nobody.
Organizations in this context include - families, people in relationships, churches, governments, and businesses. More generally - any group of two or more people involved in tasks that require some degree of skill, creativity, thought and emotional intelligence.
Having nobody in charge may sound like a recipe for anarchy to those wishing for a strong command and control system where someone (usually daddy or the daddy figure) is the boss.
If you enjoy, or need, someone IN CHARGE there are many Army/Navy/Air Force/Marine recruiters who would like to talk to you. If military activity isn't your cup of tea you could check out the personals for someone interested in an organization with a dom/sub flavor.
There are people who need someone in charge of some of their affairs due to physical or mental incapacity. Putting aside these quite specialized cases and concentrating on generally heatlhy, sane, clear thinking individuals....
The world - families - society - and many business - need people who will act of their own accord, make their own decisions and go forward.
For individuals to collaborate, to synergize, to work together, be together, create more than possible on an individual level requires a high degree of empathy, caring, communication, flexibility, intelligence, creativity, emotional resilance, listening, egolessness, not-knowing...in other words it requires a fairly highly evolved individuals. Due to the need for highly evolved humans, you will find that some organizations cannot function without a patriarchal, hiearchical, command and control system.
The cool thing is that you can choose who to include in your organization. Another way to think of this is that "your" organization is more akin to a circle of friends, circle of workers, circle of acquaintances - than what you may think of as "your" organization defined by the org chart, your family, who you work for or who works for you on paper.
You already know this.
The people who don't want the cat let out of the bag have some vested interest in maintaining the appearance that some "one" is in charge. It's an interesting discussion why that may be, but way beyond anything I feel up to this morning. Some ideas for future consideration as to why -
power over vs. power with
powerless vs. powerful or powerfilled
desire to abuse - dysfuntional familes/relationships or predators
money
insecurity on the part of the powerful "one"
fear
laziness
need apparent security vs real security
cultural norms
The apparent vs real security is interesting....
If you build up a very rigid body of any sort it's easy to break it. If you build up a very rigid organizational command and control structure and then lose the leader...then you have anarchy and chaos. Or to put it differently - if daddy dies, or leaves and daddy was the answer-man/leader/boss/decision maker then the family is set adrift.
Putting it in less serious terms it's the old "let's run amuck" now that the boss is on vacation or otherwise out of the office, deal. Does that happen where you work? If not why not? and if things go the same as always...maybe ask yourself...
Who's in charge here?
