Heidi Klein of the Snelling Center clued me in to an article by John Sviokla at Harvard Business Publishing on the power of the edge-based organization. It's a nice follow-up to my earlier posting about lessons from the presidential campaign for nonprofits.
This article talks about how the Obama campaign gave tech tools and decision-making power to those at the "edge" of the campaign, rather than keeping it on the "inside". It's worth reading, as it is an interesting question for all organizations to ponder.
http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/sviokla/2008/11/barack_obamas_edgebased_organi.html
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Good article - the excerpt below is especially interesting to me - this level of delegation requires courage and a significant amount of trust between organizational leaders and their networks:
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……..
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.
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