Organizational Democracy

At tonight’s New Tech MeetUp we had an unConference with 20 topics for groups called out by attendees.  I was in Group 18:  crowdsourcing, growing a social network, organizational democracy, and wikis.

It was a great conversation.  I learned a lot.  Fascinating questions and stories were raised.  One thing that interested me was discussion about voting.

Voting is just one ingredient in democracy.  When people vote for a winner on American Idol, they are voting.  Everyone has one vote.  But voting is to democracy what sugar is to food:  just one ingredient.

Another ingredient in democracy is the ability of people to contribute their ideas and content.  Contribution is to democracy what bread is to food:  another ingredient.

Sugar and bread make sweetbread or some kind of cake.  There’s lots of other ingredients available for cooking democracy though, just like there’s lots of food other than sugar, bread and cake.

So what other ingredients are out there for a healthy, tasty and balanced democracy diet?  When people do single-source voting, such as American Idol, where all votes go into one pool and choose the winner, it’s easier to swing the results and get critics outraged at the “stupidity” of crowds.  Howard Stern can encourage lots of people to vote for Sanjaya. 

So another democracy ingredient is teams.  At the MeetUp, it was difficult for 500 people to have a conversation together.  So Scott asked for 20 topics.  When we broke out into 20 groups, some groups still had 25 people or more.  It was hard for everyone to feel involved.  Some people broke off into their own even smaller groups.  These groups or teams (different names for slightly different things), each in our own way, got a lot more done. 

We got to know each other better.  We even started to identify who is passionate about what, what we each care about, what our experiences have been, and who wanted to take “ownership” (another ingredient) of certain topics or roles.

Teams are to democracy as water is to food.  They add some moisture and hold the other ingredients together.  Checks and balances are another ingredient you can add in once you have teams.  To make it more difficult for one person or a few people to influence everyone into a decision, we can go from single-source voting where any one decision is quick and overwhelming, to instead a few teams or sources which each check the decisions of the others and create more balanced end-results.

The simplest form of checks and balances is when a small group of people reviews and filters out suggestions from “popular” single-source content or vote.  CNN did this recently with the CNN/YouTube debates.  A small team of people at CNN chose which of the thousands of videos would be shown on national television and which questions would be asked to the candidates. 

A more advanced form is when a committee reviews decisions made by managers at a company.  Or when a community board reviews decisions made by the City Council or Mayor’s office.

Checks and balances are to democracy as salt is to food.  It preserves and improves the taste.

We’ve only covered a few ingredients, but at least the water and salt makes the cake better than the dry bread and sugar.  There’s lots more to come.