Obama's Seven Lessons for Radical Innovators - Umair Haque - The Diigo Meta page

• 05 Mar 09
  

  Marlene Vigil

  innovation grassroots campaign obama management organization new radical lessons purpose unity resilience power ideals rhetoric

• 12 Jan 09
  

  FruFru FourOne

  obama innovation management Politics

• 13 Dec 08
  

  David Donica
• 17 Nov 08
  

  Mark Blair

  How did Obama utilize radically asymmetrical competition to shatter Washington's toxic, bitter 20th century status quo?
  
  The most critical part of the story is the organization Obama built. Though conservatives are still arguing that Obama has little executive experience, nothing could be further from the truth.

  leadership working smarter

• 10 Nov 08
  

  Yule Heibel

  As usual, a brilliant essay by Umair Haque on Obama's win and what business can learn from it in terms of innovation.
  QUOTE
  Barack Obama is one of the most radical management innovators in the world today. Obama's team built something truly world-changing: a new kind of political organization for the 21st century. It differs from yesterday's political organizations as much as Google and Threadless differ from yesterday's corporations: all are a tiny handful of truly new, 21st century institutions in the world today.
  
  Obama presidential bid succeeded, in other words, as our research at the Lab has discussed for the past several years, through the power of new DNA: new rules for new kinds of institutions.
  UNQUOTE

  obama umair umair_haque management innovation business_model

  • 1. Have a self-organization design. What was really different about Obama's organization? We're used to thinking about organizations in 20th century terms: do we design them to be tall, or flat?
    

    
    But tall and flat are concepts built for an industrial era. They force us to think - spatially and literally - in two dimensions: tall organizations command unresponsively, and flat organizations respond uncontrollably.

    
    Obama's organization blew past these orthodoxies: it was able to combine the virtues of both tall and flat organizations. How? By tapping the game-changing power of self-organization. Obama's organization was less tall or flat than spherical - a tightly controlled core, surrounded by self-organizing cells of volunteers, donors, contributors, and other participants at the fuzzy edges.

  • 2. Seek elasticity of resilience.
  • 10 more annotations...
  • • What happened when McCain attacked Obama with negative ads in September? Such attacks would have depleted the coffers of a 20th century organization, who would have been forced to retaliate quickly and decisively in kind. Yet, Obama's organization responded furiously in exactly the opposite way: with record-breaking fundraising. That's resilience: reflexively bouncing back to an existential threat by growing, augmenting, or strengthening resources.
    • 3. Minimize strategy.
    • 4. Maximize purpose. Change the game? That's 20th century thinking at its finest - and narrowest. The 21st century is about changing the world.
    • Bigness of purpose is what separates 20th century and 21st century organizations: yesterday, we built huge corporations to do tiny, incremental things - tomorrow, we must build small organizations that can do tremendously massive things.
    • And to do that, you must strive to change the world radically for the better - and always believe that yes, you can. You must maximize, stretch, and utterly explode your sense of purpose.
    • 5. Broaden unity.
    • Obama intuitively understands a larger truth of next-generation economics. Unified markets are what a world driven to collapse by hyperconsumption is desperately going to need. We're going to need not a hundred different kinds of razors - and their spiralling costs of complexity and waste - but a single razor that everybody, from the slums of Rio to the lofts of Tribeca, is overjoyed to use.
    • 6. Thicken power.
    • 7. Remember that there is nothing more asymmetrical than an ideal.
    • That seventh lesson is the starting point for tomorrow's radical innovators - because it's the thread that knits the others together. And it's where you should start if you want to use these seven rules to start building 21st century institutions - whether businesses, non-profits, social enterprises, or political campaigns.
• 09 Nov 08
  

  ahughes2 Hughes

  Campaign 2008 Activism Sociology

• 

  a77ila
• 07 Nov 08
  

  Michel Bauwens

  The most critical part of the story is the organization Obama built. Though conservatives are still arguing that Obama has little executive experience, nothing could be further from the truth.

  P2P-Elections P2P

• 06 Nov 08
  

  Chuck Brands
• 

  Suketu Talekar

  • Where are the ideals in your organization? What ideals are missing - absent, bankrupt, stolen - from your economy, industry, or market? What ideals will you fight and struggle for - and live? Because the ultimate problem with industrial-era business was, as Wall Street has so convincingly demonstrated, this: there weren't any.

    
    That seventh lesson is the starting point for tomorrow's radical innovators - because it's the thread that knits the others together. And it's where you should start if you want to use these seven rules to start building 21st century institutions - whether businesses, non-profits, social enterprises, or political campaigns.

• 

  Pankaj

  obama innovation innovative management

• 

  Ton Zijlstra

  Umair takes some lessons out of Obama's campaign for innovating management

  uselections management strategy innovationstrategy innovation

• 05 Nov 08
  

  Sean Hackbarth

  This is business-speak gobble-dee-gook.

• 

  Conner Huber

  Innovation Politics

• 

  Emmanuel Fan

  Obama's team built something truly world-changing: a new kind of political organization for the 21st century. It differs from yesterday's political organizations as much as Google and Threadless differ from yesterday's corporations: all are a tiny handful of truly new, 21st century institutions in the world today.

  strategy management hbr

  • Obama's organization was less tall or flat than spherical - a tightly controlled core, surrounded by self-organizing cells of volunteers, donors, contributors, and other participants at the fuzzy edges. The result? Obama's organization was able to reverse tremendous asymmetries in finance, marketing, and distribution - while McCain's organization was left trapped by a stifling command-and-control paradigm.
  • That's resilience: reflexively bouncing back to an existential threat by growing, augmenting, or strengthening resources.
  • 5 more annotations...
  • • Rather, Obama's campaign took a scalpel to strategy - because they realized that strategy, too often, kills a deeply-lived sense of purpose, destroys credibility, and corrupts meaning.
    • Bigness of purpose is what separates 20th century and 21st century organizations: yesterday, we built huge corporations to do tiny, incremental things - tomorrow, we must build small organizations that can do tremendously massive things.
    • Unified markets are what a world driven to collapse by hyperconsumption is desperately going to need.
    • You can beat people into subjugation - but you can never command their loyalty, creativity, or passion. Thick power is true power: it's radically more durable, less costly, and more intense.
    • Where are the ideals in your organization? What ideals are missing - absent, bankrupt, stolen - from your economy, industry, or market? What ideals will you fight and struggle for - and live?
• 

  W W
  • Have a self-organization design
  • Seek elasticity of resilience.
  • 10 more annotations...
  • • What happened when McCain attacked Obama with negative ads in September? Such attacks would have depleted the coffers of a 20th century organization, who would have been forced to retaliate quickly and decisively in kind. Yet, Obama's organization responded furiously in exactly the opposite way: with record-breaking fundraising. That's resilience: reflexively bouncing back to an existential threat by growing, augmenting, or strengthening resources.
    • Minimize strategy.
    • They didn't waste resources trying to dominate the news cycle, game the system, strong-arm the party, or out-triangulate competitors' positions. Rather, Obama's campaign took a scalpel to strategy - because they realized that strategy, too often, kills a deeply-lived sense of purpose, destroys credibility, and corrupts meaning.
    • Maximize purpose
    • Obama's goal wasn't simply to win an election, garner votes, or run a great campaign. It was larger and more urgent: to change the world.
    • Broaden unity.
    • Thicken power
    • True power is what Obama has learned wield: the power to inspire, lead, and engender belief. You can beat people into subjugation - but you can never command their loyalty, creativity, or passion. Thick power is true power: it's radically more durable, less costly, and more intense.
    • Remember that there is nothing more asymmetrical than an ideal
    • Where are the ideals in your organization? What ideals are missing - absent, bankrupt, stolen - from your economy, industry, or market? What ideals will you fight and struggle for - and live? Because the ultimate problem with industrial-era business was, as Wall Street has so convincingly demonstrated, this: there weren't any.

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