John Sviokla The Near Futurist RSS Feed

Barack Obama's Edge-Based Organization

10:38 AM Tuesday November 11, 2008

Tags:Election 2008, Social media, Strategy

President-elect Obama is the first politician use the power of the network to create an edge-based organization -- and thereby raise more money than any politician in history and sweep 364 electoral votes. No presidential campaign will be the same again. On this site, both John Quelch and Umair Haque briefly note that his campaign enabled self-organization, but I believe an edge-based organization means much more than simple self-organization - and its concepts are relevant to all companies.

What does it mean to have an edge-based organization? It means that everyone has situational awareness, skills to take action, shared values, and decision rights to empower the edge to take action (My thanks to my friends John Henderson and John Clippinger who have deeply influenced my thinking on this topic.) Obama's campaign did all of these.

Obama used the internet to endow the very edges of his organization with all the tools to self-organize, to get out the message with sophisticated media. He even armed them with an Apple iPhone application that allowed you to compare your address book to the centralized Obama campaign phone logs and see if there was someone you knew who needed to be called by you - not the machine - to support Obama. (See also my earlier blog post on Obama's use of the network compared to Hillary Clinton's.)

Of course, as the pundits note, the economy was a huge factor, but it was the edge-based organization that turned those worries into action. The Obama campaign gave people constant updates on the issues and progress in individual states - complete situational awareness. By giving the tools to the edge to organize gatherings, mailings, information, and coordination, they gave out "decision rights" that normally would have been kept closer to the campaign staff. Of course, those at the "edge" of the fight for Obama had the same shared values as those "inside."

For the past three decades the military has been working to create an edge-based organization because it is more nimble and effective. It takes great training, shared beliefs, great technology, and leadership with a whole new level of delegation. I think the most interesting question now, which was raised by a commentator on Quelch's article, is how will President Obama use the edge-based organization to govern, not just campaign?

My bet is he will do with the edge-based organization what Franklin D. Roosevelt did with the radio - reinvent it to create a whole new method of governance. He will go direct to the people via all relevant media; he will organize by issue; he will create a new form of direct democracy which will change the balance of power between the executive and the legislative branches of government.

All businesses can learn from watching these developments because everyone's market is alive with passion, desires, and ideas. But only the edge-based organizations can see the opportunities and move quickly enough to meet the challenges.

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Comments

John,
This is a very interesting article on how Obama used the unconstrained organizational concept of “Edge Organization” successfully for his election campaign.
I am sure that he will use this concept again and move away the power from the center to the edges thereby leveraging the potentially unlimited degrees of freedom to create a whole new method of governance

- Posted by Ramaseshan 
November 13, 2008 3:21 AM

What you call the “edge based organization” is also known as community. As an online marketer, I use web 2.0 technologies to build relationships with the customers who do not have direct managed relations with the company I work for (a fortune 30 software company). Through community development, we identify influencers, who we build strong relationships with, who then become evangelists for our products, technology and services. This creates organic groups of volunteer marketers who spread the "good word" to their friends and associates, creating buzz for our company.

Obama’s use of web 2.0, mobile technology, online community and evangelists are extremely cutting edge, and it would be great to truly democratize the country. I guess being a "community organizer" is a pretty useful thing when you are looking to build grassroots support and "evangelists" :)

- Posted by Brandon 
November 13, 2008 12:35 PM

It is really thrilling to see how success can be achieved by changing the paradigm. To see what Obama has achieved in the election in our organisations and knowing the potential of success awesome. It seems that organisations would have to remove internal competition to be able to create and edge-based organisation. It seems to me that having a high level of trust would be essential. Is this something that organisations would take on board during tough economis times? It is probably the best time to make these organisational changes to position ourselves for the economic upturn.

I will be watching with interest to see how successful Obama's organisation is in governance.

- Posted by Denise Marshall 
November 30, 2008 4:33 PM

Baracks Obama Edge_Based Organisation is truely innovative and had the power to truely mobilise a lot of people to his campaign, with the ability to also send in their comments and concerns. This is earnestly participatory and it should be commended.

Gabriel Arigu

- Posted by Gabriel Arigu 
November 30, 2008 5:35 PM

Unbridled decentralization makes an organization vulnerable during crises and downturns. It may work some times, but entails risks. Information is a strategic resource. Excessive situational awareness will spill over to competitors and adversaries. An edge-based organization will also face accelerated cost growth. This is not to say that corporations and governments should be entirely centralized. MBO is an appropriate prescription to achieve balance between a core and the peripheries. Bush could have retained Colin Powell, saved the opprobrium of Donald Rumsfeld, kept Dick Cheney in check, and even prevented some of the bullying of Condoleeza Rice, by giving each of his team members tightly specified goals, unsparing accountability, and unambiguous authority limits. Obama was still learning the alphabet when MBO first surfaced, but it is a proven method to stay in the saddle.

- Posted by Dr Satyabroto Banerji 
December 1, 2008 2:19 AM

it's reminded me with the early days of 3M when the management adapted the concept of grow and divide.

- Posted by Ehab El Ahmar 
December 1, 2008 6:27 AM

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John Sviokla

John Sviokla is vice chairman of Diamond Management & Technology Consultants, Inc. (NASDAQ: DTPI). Prior to joining Diamond, Dr. Sviokla researched and taught at the Harvard Business School for twelve years in Marketing, MIS, and Decision Sciences. His extensive writings have appeared in books and journals including the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Fast Company, and the Wall Street Journal. He is a frequent speaker at executive forums worldwide and earned his BA from Harvard College, and his MBA and DBA with a major in management information systems from Harvard University. He can be found at www.sviokla.com

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