A leaderless organization is decentralized, meaning it does not rely upon a central authority for leadership, strategy, or tactics. Being decentralized makes it easier to heal, faster to respond and innovate, and more able to grow in scale.

An example of a large leaderless organization is the Internet. Not just the set of agreements that makes the structure work, but all the way down to the wire protocols that route around damage in the network, such as when a backhoe slices through a fiber link between two ISPs.

In projects, Wikipedia is a decentralized organization, while the Encyclopaedia Brittanica is a classic centralized organization.

The idea of the leaderless organization is put forth in the book The Starfish and The Spider.