[SYNTHESIS] A President who “works wikily”?

Written by Heather McLeod Grant on Friday, November 14th, 2008
Filed under Network tradecraft, Networks in action, Synthesis

By now it has become a journalistic cliché to say that President-elect Barack Obama just ran the most impressive campaign in political history. Coupling his background in community organizing with the connective power of Silicon Valley’s latest Web 2.0 tools, he built and then supercharged an enormous grassroots network, which in turn propelled him to the White House on Election Day. Bridging divides of race, class, gender, and generations (with the exception of those over 60), Obama proved that people were hungry for hope, inspiration, and an opportunity to take action.

In the process, Obamamania took on and triumphed over the traditional party machines of both the Democrats (Hillary Clinton’s campaign), and Republicans (John McCain), who are still left wondering: what just happened? (The Atlantic’s article by Joshua Green from last spring was prescient in predicting just how Obama would triumph.) Answer: he built a movement, and a network—not just a tightly-run organization.

Pundits, politicos and nonprofit activists of all stripes will be studying Obama’s campaign for months, even years to come, eager to learn how to apply similar approaches to their own candidates and causes. The on-line post-election debrief has been buzzing with chatter about what this all means for nonprofits and foundations—and for the future of political organizing. Some of our favorite articles and reflections include those by Lucy Bernholz, who also tallies similar articles written during the campaign, and CauseWired’s essay on “What Obama’s Victory Means for the Social Sector.”

Having spent the past two years reflecting on networks and social change, we’re convinced that the Obama campaign represents a tipping point in larger public awareness about the power of self-organizing networks. That awareness is finally hitting home in the social sector: it is now known that you can give people one part inspiration, one part information technology, and trust them enough to sit back and watch them find innovative ways to contribute collaboratively. In fact, in our Working Wikily paper, we summarized the principles of this new networked age—many of which were embodied by the Obama campaign:

• Decentralized organizational structure: While Obama’s campaign did have a “war room” of sorts, it was more characterized by distributed leadership than command-and-control hierarchy. The campaign had a very clear ideology and message at its core, but delegated operational authority to the state and regional level. These local offices in turn handed over the bulk of their responsibility to the millions of volunteers who were empowered, and enabled, to self-organize using information and tools provided over the Internet. Obama mobilized 10 million supporters, 3.1 million of whom donated to the cause.
• Speed and scale: One of the great virtues of networks is that they can scale quickly, at a cost of far fewer resources. Rather than having to build offices and hire paid staff in many states, Obama leveraged the power of local volunteers as the base, requiring only minimal input from “headquarters.” This vast network—linked with a thick web of emails, SMS texts, and Twitter postings—also enabled the campaign to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people with short notice, and to compete in many states simultaneously, including traditional Republican strong-holds. Obama quickly out-competed Hillary Clinton in the primaries, who had taken a more traditional bureaucratic approach to her org chart. As the Atlantic article noted (same as above): “What’s amazing,” says Pete Leyden of the New Politics Institute, “is that Hillary built the best campaign that has ever been done in Democratic politics on the old model – she raised more money…locked down all the party stalwarts…assembled an all-star team of consultants…and mastered this top-down, command-and-control type of outfit. And yet, she’s…beaten by this political start-up that is essentially a totally different model of the new politics.” In this case, Obama was also able to far out-raise his opponents, focusing his fundraising priorities on drumming up millions of smaller checks rather than thousands of larger checks from traditional wealthy party donors.
• Offer trust and selectively give up control: One member of our team recalls signing up to make phone calls to independent voters in swing states, where he was encouraged to speak from the heart about why he was personally excited by the Obama campaign, rather than having to attend an elaborate training or memorize pre-defined talking points. Empowering volunteers in this manner requires real trust, and some relinquishing of traditional command-and-control messaging. By giving up that control, the campaign was not only able to eliminate the task of training volunteers to deliver one message, it gave volunteers an outlet for their enthusiasm. Many volunteers have reported that the experience of sharing passion for something important was the reason they arrived and what made the experience particularly worthwhile. Generating that passion and then giving it a useful outlet is fast becoming a critical skill for organizers.
• Greater openness and transparency: Obama’s campaign did have great discipline around “message control,” but at the same time, Obama’s network of supporters never felt they were being preached at from above, through traditional broadcast communication techniques. Rather, they were engaged in a prolonged dialogue with the candidate, reinforced by blog posts, text messages, conference calls (to volunteer centers), wikis, and ample opportunities to share their opinions back with the campaign, or with one another.
• Peer to peer networking: Perhaps the most powerful aspect of the campaign was the ability of local supporters to connect with one another—rather than going through the “hub” of campaign headquarters, they could connect to other supporters in their own community to organize events, spark conversations, or encourage others to donate. Obama, with support from his high-tech staff, saw the power of building social networks through his campaign website. By hiring Web 2.0-savvy staff (including one of the Facebook founders), he integrated the best of social networking tools into his website. As Beth Kanter described, toward the end thousands of supporters were giving testimonials on their Facebook pages and rallying their peers online to get out the vote.

Now that the conversation is underway about what we can learn from the campaign, the next big question is of course how this will affect Obama’s style of governance. Many bloggers have been asking this question and it has also been discussed in the Washington Post (e.g. “What Happens to MyBO,” “Under Obama, Web Would Be the Way.”) There is already a website called Whitehouse2.org running a Digg-style popularity contest for what issues the Obama administration should prioritize. Will he use such sources and continue to connect with his millions of supporters, engaging in substantive policy debates? Will he be able to mobilize their support as advocates to pressure passage in Congress of key legislation? What will happen when his base organizes against him, as happened when he reneged on the promise to vote against telecom immunity, and will inevitably happen again? Overall, how will he transform how we think about communication with the White House and the federal government from a one-way broadcast to a two-way dialogue?

Already a group of (younger) mavericks within the Republican Party has set up a new on-line campaign modeled on Obama’s, to rejuvenate a younger generation of conservatives. They are all too aware that McCain’s demographics don’t bode well for the future of the party. And others are asking how the social sector can learn from all of this: after all, our jobs are to inspire and empower people to take action. So perhaps we too can learn a thing or two from the new Inspirer in Chief.

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