Shaping Network Society

Distributed leadership is still a new concept, even though it sometimes seems that most of what we do is

building robust and resilient communities of like-minded individuals that are willing to be engaged in the value creation process, even though we do not control them through contract or the muzzle of a gun.

Think new corporate governance strategies, the millenial workplace, enterprise 2.0, collaborative strategizing, municipal participatory budgeting, user-centric design processes, open source software development, UN multi-stakeholder processes, etc.

The first challenge for successful distributed leadership is to see the loss of control over open processes as an opportunity not a threat. “There’s this interesting tension between the value of having contributed information versus a clear loss of control over the process,” says Eric Kansa, executive director of the information and service design program at the University of California, Berkeley. Open processes allow us to leverage not only the wisdom of the crowds, increase our legitimacy by outsourcing accountability to the interested public, but also increase capacity massively. The only comparable historical management reform that comes to mind is Napoleon’s idea of the levee en masse, moving from expensive hired guns (mercenaries) to a citizen army of Frenchmen proud to fight and die for their country.

The second is to ignore the political realities of the hierarchy, specifically, middle management. Middle managers fear whatever flattens the organizational structure and makes them superfluous. A response to one of the top evangelists of the Intellipedia project in the intelligence community by a staff member: “ ‘I don’t need top cover, I need middle cover. I need someone to convince my manager this is something we need to do.’ “

The third challenge is to change organizational culture. There is no way around it: open processes are different and counter-intuitive: Sharing information increases your power, giving up control increases your capacity, giving up the ability to control your image (transparency) increases legitimacy. As the head evangelist of intellipedia says, “There’s a reason this is called disruptive technology. These are counter-cultural concepts, which can be very daunting.”

It is not easy, but it can be done. And the payoffs will be huge – think of the impact Napoleon had on today’s Europe.

The blog-post was inspired by Jill R. Aitoro‘s article in nextgov The Gospel of Government 2.0. All quotes (except the first) are taken from his article (the hyperlinks point to it).

Distributed leadership is an important puzzle piece for making open value creation work. The internet gives us the tools to create open value, but that does not mean we will all be great at using them. In the following MIT-lecture, Marshall Ganz outlines the distributed leadership approach they used in the Obama campaign. In a nutshell, he argues that (a) we need to develop a motivation narrative/story, then (b) focus on relationship building by constructing commitments to common purpose, (c) structure transparent and open organizational processes and roles, (d) strategize, and (e) act (=produce measurable outcomes).

“In the Obama campaign, there was no internet strategy, there was strategy that used internet tools.”

There are not many instances when a governmental memo shaped the political philosophy of a generation. Clearly Kennan’s Long Telegram comes to mind:

The ‘Long Telegram’ was sent by George Kennan from the United States Embassy in Moscow to Washington, where it was received on February 22nd 1946. The telegram was prompted by US enquiries about Soviet behaviour, especially with regards to their refusal to join the newly created World Bank and International Monetary Fund. In his text, Kennan outlined Soviet belief and practice and proposed the policy of ‘containment‘, making the Telegram a key document in the history of the Cold War. The name ‘long’ derives from the telegram’s 8000 word length. (quote from About.com)

The social media community believes Obama’s Transparency/Participation/Collaboration memo will have a similar impact on our century. The framework implied in the memo has been taken up governments worldwide, real world policies have been implemented, and the “access-to-information-legislation” topic has moved from arcane to center field. It is surprising, however, that not much is known about the background/history of the memo. Who drafted it? Who developed the TPC framework? Who brought the topic onto the agenda? Who knows more? Who can point me to the relevant people?

I do not agree with everything Umair Haque says, but on the 10th anniversary of the cluetrain manifesto and the 502nd anniversary of the 95 theses, it does make sense to read-write another manifesto. Manifesto writing, actually, has been an underappreciated text-form for some time, well it had a bad reputation for some time. So here it comes, the “Generation M” Manifesto:

Dear Old People Who Run the World,

My generation would like to break up with you.

Everyday, I see a widening gap in how you and we understand the world — and what we want from it. I think we have irreconcilable differences.

You wanted big, fat, lazy “business.” We want small, responsive, micro-scale commerce.

You turned politics into a dirty word. We want authentic, deep democracy — everywhere.

You wanted financial fundamentalism. We want an economics that makes sense for people — not just banks.

You wanted shareholder value — built by tough-guy CEOs. We want real value, built by people with character, dignity, and courage.

You wanted an invisible hand — it became a digital hand. Today’s markets are those where the majority of trades are done literally robotically. We want a visible handshake: to trust and to be trusted.

You wanted growth — faster. We want to slow down — so we can become better.

You didn’t care which communities were capsized, or which lives were sunk. We want a rising tide that lifts all boats.

You wanted to biggie size life: McMansions, Hummers, and McFood. We want to humanize life.

You wanted exurbs, sprawl, and gated anti-communities. We want a society built on authentic community.

You wanted more money, credit and leverage — to consume ravenously. We want to be great at doing stuff that matters.

You sacrificed the meaningful for the material: you sold out the very things that made us great for trivial gewgaws, trinkets, and gadgets. We’re not for sale: we’re learning to once again do what is meaningful.

There’s a tectonic shift rocking the social, political, and economic landscape. The last two points above are what express it most concisely. I hate labels, but I’m going to employ a flawed, imperfect one: Generation “M.”

What do the “M”s in Generation M stand for? The first is for a movement. It’s a little bit about age — but mostly about a growing number of people who are acting very differently. They are doing meaningful stuff that matters the most. Those are the second, third, and fourth “M”s.

[...]

What do you think? But more importantly, have you written your personal manifesto? How will you shape network society?

by Ines Mergel

I am a Twitter enthusiast and as one of those people who do spend a lot of time online, I noticed that Twitter is one of the information channels, that help me get access to information, that is otherwise not on my radar screen or I would not get access to.

Twitter – for me personally as a Government 2.0 researcher – therefore has the potential to bridge structural holes in the communication and information structure that I have built over the years. In addition, I noticed that it is expanding my attention network of a) topics I should pay attention to, and b) people and their public conversation streams that are interesting to know. In a new information paradigm of the US government to move from a need to know to a need to share strategy, I thought I would share a few interesting people whose information and conversation who might be interesting to listen in to.

Without trying to convince anyone of the power of public conversations happening on Twitter, I put together a list of people and organizations that might have helpful information for anyone interested in Web 2.0 in government:

@timoreilly: Tim O’Reilly is the found and CEO of O’Reilly Media, traditionally known for publishing IT-related books, isnow a supporter of Government 2.0 and hosts conferences on the topic. Definitely worth following -> I learned a LOT!

@mcaffee: Andrew McAffee, a former professor at Harvard Business School, has coined the term Enterprise 2.0. Andy addresses corporate but also general Web 2.0 problems and is asking questions using the hashtag #andyasks -> add the tag to the new search function, so that you can revisit the information purring in every few days.

If you like tweets from space live from the repair team of the Hubble telescope, space astronaut Mike Massimino is tweeting his observations directly from the space shuttle: @Astro_Mike. NASA itself was one of the first twitter users within the US federal government: @NASA:

As the swine flu (H1N1) developed and the threat level has increased to a pandemic disease, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the US has adopted a comprehensive Web 2.0 approach to reach potential groups that are at risk at the virtual locations they might be frequenting the most. I posted a blog entry on this on my blog with an overview of tools used. On Twitter: @CDCemergency.

There are tons of government agencies present on Twitter and BearingPoint has put together a huge list that can be found here.

I have selected a few government agencies I am following and find helpful:

• Department of State: Official Blog of the U.S. Department of State @dipnote: http://twitter.com/dipnote

• White House @whitehouse: http://twitter.com/whitehouse

• US Army @USArmy: http://twitter.com/USArmy

• Tweet Congress: Aggregator of tweets from Members of Congress @tweetcongress

• USA.gov – the one-stop shopping portal of the US Government: @usagov

• Transportation Security Administration (TSA):  @tsablogteam

In addition, the tweets of government-related IT publications and organizations might be helpful to learn about ongoing initiatives and news:

• One Laptop Per Child: http://twitter.com/OLPC

• Govdigest [http://twitter.com/govdigest] and DotGov [http://twitter.com/dotgov] are compiling up to date information and are retweeting information from other accounts, spreading the word to their followers and multiplying the attention base.

• UN Secretary general @secgen [http://twitter.com/secgen] is using Twitter to as an online calendar, listing whom he is meeting with each day.

• GovWiki: http://twitter.com/govwiki

• Government Technology Magazine: http://twitter.com/govtechnews

As I am located in the US, this post and my list of favorite Web 2.0 people is very much US-centric. Please leave your suggestions for additional Twitter accounts in the comments!

Following me on Twitter: @inesmergel [http://twitter.com/inesmergel]