To my thinking, the most pivotal success factor in politics and large distributed organizations in general is this:

The random occurrence of insights, and how well the political system manages them.

The following points explain how the next version of Democracy will be much more efficient than the current version at managing and circulating pivotal insights.
1. Insights occur randomly in a given population.
I use the term “insights” to refer to all of the following:

  • Crystallized perspectives on situations,
  • Foresight on emerging trends or changes that must be prepared for
  • Useful ideas,
  • Critical knowledge about tasks which must be done, or
  • Memes which if refined and spread would have a desirable effect

2. Not every person will have the same insight at the same time, and it takes time to educate and convince the entire population about the validity of a given insight

3. Insights must be acted upon within a specific window of time - otherwise
they fail to bring their intended benefit or prevent the undesirable outcome.

4. For the population to enjoy any degree of unity, insights must be commonly understood by the population at large, before action is taken.

5. But this is typically never achieved because insights are not circulated efficiently:

5.1 Instead insights remain isolated near their point of origin, either within entities who have power, or entities who are not in any position of authority. They do not get matched up with additional insights that could correct or strengthen them, and they do not get sufficiently scrutinized by all of the population. This means that later on, the insight will have unforeseen consequences for the whole or part of the population.

5.2 Often the window for necessary action will come and go before the entire population has been convinced of the validity of the insight. Those with authority are faced with the dilemma, either act without consensus within the necessary timeframe, or wait to build consensus but risk missing the timeframe when effective action is required.

6. This inefficient circulation of insights frustrates both those in power and those not in power:

6.1 Frustration for those not in power: they feel that they have no voice, that their input is never acknowledged for followed and they can become increasingly alienated (as many US voters have).

6.2 Frustration for those in power: Continous untimely discoveries. Those who are in positions of responsibility experience this issue a different way: for them it appears that in every project there are critical pivotal insights that will remain undiscovered until the most inopportune moment - when a course correction will cost the most money or disappoint the most people.

7. Throughout history this issue has been managed through an evolving series of increasingly complex organizational structures and communication methods. The objective more or less was to implement a management structure which matched the business model and culture of the organization then populate it with individuals trained to prioritize issues and communicate up and down through a heirarchy. As any casual survey of voters or employees at the typical large corporation will tell you, this approach leaves much to be desired. The prioritization of issues was an economical necessity. No group or firm has the collective attention or finances necessary to pay attention to all issues - or even to the ones necessary to their success! Why? because resources for managing insights are consumed inefficiently because of the lack of proper tools.

8. Today’s social computing applications allow us to manage insights on a whole new level of effectiveness. We can quickly and cheaply deploy social collaboration tools: - things like wikis, collaborative documents, and networked apps like Skype, Facebook and Twitter. Unlike traditional management structures these networks do not require you to guess ahead of time about the organizational purpose, size, or the subject of its collaboration. They simply have different characteristics:

  • They are organization-neutral: Facebook, Skype, Twitter, and Wikia can provide benefits for your organization no matter what size it is or what industry you’re in.
  • They are scalable, and can grow as your organization grows - with virtually no thought or planning on your part.
  • They have blurry borders which facilitate cross pollination as well as viral marketing. For example if you create a Facebook group, its members will likely have overlapping memberships in regional and other Facebook communities.

9. Your objective then, is to have a mesh made up of one or more of these collaboration tools and to tune this mesh until it allows the fastest most efficient circulation of insights possible. This mesh needs to have 3 types of participants:

  • The members who are in positions of authority/responsibility have and use the tools
  • Those members of the population who are not in positions of authority.
  • The Other Sources of Pivotal Insights: be sure to find a way to engage and include business partners, service providers, stakeholders in the greater community around you, government entities responsible for the regulation of certain aspects of your operation.

So, what does this look like in real practice? Things like:

  • Figuring out how/where it makes sense to deploy and manage a set of collaborative documents (docs.google.com) for the development of specific agendas or community statements/ guidance etc.
  • Setting up one or more appropriately managed wikis (wetpaint.com or wikia.com) to facilitate an ongoing community information source, or even community consultation (where we constantly are consulting with them on specific questions and trying to learn more about their needs and preferences.
  • Setting up a Facebook.com group and having it relate appropriately to the your closest regional network in Facebook (already exists…Facebook as one for each major city).
  • Using Twitter.com to foster constant awareness among the team or community of each other and how we’re doing what we’re doing.
  • Setting up an enterprise wiki (like Atlassian.com) if its appropriate for your needs and strategic goals …this would require justification of a budget etc. The rest of the items above are free.