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Network-Centric Thinking: The Internet's Challenge to Ego-Centric Institutions
Jed Miller and Rob Stuart
When advocacy groups embrace digital democracy, the reverberations shake the whole organization.
[continued from Network-Centric Thinking: The Internet's Challenge to Ego-Centric Institutions, page 1]
New Power
 MoveOn.org stirred up the political scene with its TV commercials questioning the Bush administration. But when it wanted to take this effort to the next level, MoveOn didn't turn to a handful of deep pocket donors so it could hire a pricey Madison Avenue advertising firm. Rather, in early 2004, it turned to its membership, both to submit possible ads to air and to judge which of the submissions should get airtime. More than 1,500 ads were entered in the "Bush In 30 Seconds" contest through MoveOn's website. 100,000 members handed out almost 3 million ratings to select the top contenders. The winning entry, "Child's Pay," not only scored highest among the online voting public, it did better in focus group testing than any of MoveOn's professionally produced ads. By opening itself to the creative contributions of its membership, and applying the network-centric model, the group executed one of its most effective campaigns to date.
New Power allows decision-making authority to spread to the edges of an organization, to membership, which not only generates excitement among supporters, but also opens up a deep well of creativity and expertise. The Old Power approach keeps this extraordinary knowledge resource untapped. In ego-centric organizations, it's a challenge to solicit the creative contributions of membership, because the results must somehow be integrated into the group's hierarchical structure. If a group manages to get a professional advertising team to contribute services, what happens if the marketing director doesn't like the final product? In ego-centric organizations, leadership tends to direct the work of member-volunteers in a way that reduces their freedom to create and undercuts their ability to contribute. Moreover, training volunteers so they become part of a group's daily operations is slow and often frustrating. A well conceived network-centric campaign, like "Bush In 30 Seconds," enables membership to participate in a deliberation process that encourages creativity, while driving toward clear, actionable projects that don't require micro-management.
Before the Internet, substantive member-involvement in organizational decision-making was tough to achieve. It required endless facilitation by leadership, and a countless face-to-face meetings. Today the tools exist to make member engagement efficient and inexpensive. In fact, thanks to the Dean campaign and MoveOn, activists are expecting these tools, which they should, since network-centric practice better reflects the reality of their everyday lives than does traditional, ego-centric thinking.
Our world is growing increasingly cellular. Our connections to institutions are more fractured and episodic. Unlike our bowling-league parents, we do not count on intermediary organizations, like unions or churches, to facilitate our links to political candidates or community causes. When we engage in group activity, it's generally through peer groups we have convened on our own. We practice membership not through trips to the local VFW, or even the local pub, but through email subscriptions, donations made on impulse, and flash-campaigns.
In a cellular world, power is transactional, not institutional. Network-centric organizations measure their effectiveness not by how much money they raise or how much press they get, but by how well they are able to make fruitful connections between their constituents. Interactions are more important than broadcasts. The Dean campaign used MeetUp.com to bring Deaniacs together at local Starbucks, so they could generate ideas and projects on their own. The more MeetUps that took place, the more momentum the campaign took on. New Power groups are awake to the fact that that an organization's real authority exists among its extended community – online and off-line. Power is generated by citizens at the grass roots. What the organization provides is an opportunity for coordinated action.
Network-centric organizing presents a low barrier to entry. MoveOn puts little emphasis on requirements to "join." Outreach is continual and recruiting is a team effort, part of the organization's essential structure. Outreach is not a single mass mailing, or a series of solicitations to simply "be part of something." Rather, the campaigns themselves are designed to facilitate outreach. Often the point of the campaign is to provide members with the opportunity to take direct action – to write their Congressperson, organize a vigil, or contribute knowledge to a shared resource – and to encourage their friends to do so, as well. Like a meme, the campaign spreads. There are no penalties on late arrivals to the scene and no perks for early adopters. One campaign succeeds the next, and each new effort offers members the chance to participate in shaping the group's strategy.
A major objective for network-centric organizations is information sharing among participants. The better informed membership becomes, the more effective its decision making will be as new campaigns take shape. New Power invests in relationship building, knowledge management, and online community technologies that make it simple for individuals to sign up, contribute, and connect to valuable information. The arrangement, analysis, and presentation of information is a team effort. The easier it is for membership to communicate among its own ranks, the more likely it is that fruitful relationships will be generated. Network-centric organizations devote significant resources to expanding the capacity of the group's membership to perform.
In a cellular world, power is transactional, not institutional.... What the organization provides is an opportunity for coordinated action.
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In the network-centric model, membership, and sometimes even those outside of the organization, take on jobs that would traditionally fall to in-house staff. Though it has only 10 paid staffers, MoveOn.org has had an impact exponentially greater than a a small team could ever have hoped to achieve by traditional means. The group's open, collaborative structure empowers non-staff to act effectively on behalf of the organization. In a 2003 article in The Atlantic, Democratic organizer Simon Rosenberg praised MoveOn because "they ask people to do things.... They treat their supporters like they are important people and not just donors." This approach extends to the way network-centric groups encourage leadership among their members. Power is distributed vertically and horizontally across the organization, and the sharing of resources often includes peer organizations, even potential rivals.
Since the base of New Power resides in the trust and support of a group's extended community, network-centric thinking focuses less on competition with peers, and more on providing knowledge that members can use. In the classic movie "Miracle on 34th Street," Macy's Santa nearly gets fired for referring a shopper to Gimbel's (a careful reader will note that network-centric talk leads quickly to feel-good movies). Despite its ego-centric orientation, Macy's adjusts quickly to the response of its customers, and, taking their Santa's lead, encourages its entire sales force to reach beyond the store's traditional borders.
Network-conscious groups devote substantial resources to supporting their peers, not only by sharing information and providing referrals, but by participating in collaborative activities, such as conferences or joint campaigns. MoveOn, for example, regularly throws the spotlight onto other organizations, sending alerts on behalf of like-minded efforts, directing members to the donation or petition pages of groups like Taxpayers for Common Sense, Environment2004, United for Peace, or Common Cause.
Though the war in Iraq and the presidential election have put the achievements of the Dean campaign and MoveOn in the spotlight, there are network-centric success stories beyond the political sphere. Probono.net, for example, has pioneered a network-centric approach to legal service and advocacy for low and middle income people. Clients who cannot afford legal representation use Probono.net, and its LawHelp.org site, to find attorneys who can provide pro bono services. The main site enables state legal services, bar associations, and existing legal service communities to pool their information and make it available through a common platform. The LawHelp site gives clients forms, tips, and region-specific legal information that would otherwise be irretrievable due to the daunting bureaucracy that hides most state and local social services behind confusing telephony and unwelcoming service centers.
LawHelp puts the network-centric model into action. Its library of legal information and searchable database of pro bono attorneys are not the product of a centralized, hierarchically managed effort. Rather, they are the result of a collaboration between a small staff and a vast, extended community of contributors who enter knowledge into the system in the form of legal briefs, expertise, and individual services.
Attorneys in the Probono.net community benefit from ongoing support and training in pro bono practice. They also gain access to hundreds of other attorneys, rather than conducting their pro bono work in near isolation, which had been the standard. As with MoveOn, the barrier to participation is relatively low, while data exchange within the group is extremely high.
Probono.net and LawHelp tie together hundreds of state and local legal services organizations, creating a web of support for their common objectives. Advocacy groups can enter information into the LawHelp database, as well as download materials entered by their counterparts in other states or areas of practice, so they can more easily learn from the experience of others. At the same time, an increasing number of low income people are finding access to better informed attorneys because of Probono.net's network-centric approach.
These sites tap the skills of their members, and provide platforms for targeted, collaborative action. Network-centric groups understand that their members provide them with a strategic advantage. All members are valued for their unique contributions, and different kinds of contributions are encouraged, depending on the knowledge base of the membership. An influx of college students may lead to more campus activities, for example. The group will adjust to accommodate the available resources, rather than take on projects that are beyond its expertise.
Network-centric organizations are more fluid, they can respond quickly to changes in circumstances. By using online tools like polling or threaded discussions, they can get rapid feedback from membership on what position or activities are appropriate in a given situation. For instance, once the U.S. army had occupied Iraq, MoveOn asked its members to participate in an online forum to decide what the group's position should be on how long the troops should remain there, whether they should pull out immediately, set a date for withdrawl, or "stay the course." As a member, you feel more valued when someone asks your opinion. You get a sense of ownership. So you become more committed to the organization and more likely to take part in it campaigns. You are also more likely to support the group financially, since you have already given it something even more valuable than money: your ideas and opinions.
Because of the dynamic nature of the network-centric model, active participation by members can ebb and flow. A member may be deeply involved in one campaign and then sit out the next two. That's fine, in fact it's healthy, and a reflection of the busy realities of our cellular society.
Members may be part of several like-minded organizations at the same time. In fact, it is in a group's interest for its members to engage with other organizations, to get involved in other issues, because it helps each group extend the impact of its message and actions. The network-centric approach encourages members to access their social networks, to get their PTA or gardening club to join a vigil – while the ego-centric method requires "official representatives" to speak to reach out to people, usually in a structured, formal setting. For Old Power, alliance-building is a project that needs facilitation. New Power groups trust members to be their ambassadors.
Just because network-centric thinking trusts membership to make decisions does not mean that strong leadership is not important to a group's success. Without an inspiring leadership vision and capable administration, advocacy groups flounder. But for leadership in the network-centric model, the emphasis is on facilitation, on creating conditions for group participation, rather than on providing comprehensive agendas and issuing detailed action plans.
Network-centric leaders promote network expansion. They recognize accomplishments throughout the group's network and foster more links between participants in the group, as well as potential allies outside of it. Power still gathers at the center, but the process of leadership decision-making is more inclusive, and reaches deep into the group's staff and membership.
MoveOn, for all its groundbreaking, network-centric innovations, acts in many ways as a traditional, Old Power institution. It garners media attention, solicits donations, and uses its political clout through an internal process that includes top-down decisions. Even the "Bush In 30 Seconds" campaign required well coordinated, decisive leadership. While membership submitted the ads and participated in the voting, the project was designed by a small team of dedicated organizers. Even the voting process included a level of top-down decision making, with the final winners chosen by a team of 15 "experts," including James Carville, Russell Simmons, Donna Brazile, and Michael Moore.
But leaders in a network-centric effort treat their network of members and supporters as peers. They defer to the power of the grassroots organizers, and do not seek to call attention to themselves. It would be silly to say that network-centric leaders have no egos, but they have a different attitude, and they take particular pride in the enlightened engagement of others.
Key Characteristics
Listed below are the essential characteristics of ego-centric and network-centric organizations:
Ego-Centric Characteristics
• Focuses on building organizational moral and internal team cohesion
• Key staff evaluated on internal organizational goals
• Value placed on raising organizational profile, development and centralizing organizational resources
• Leadership focus on goals and managing staff to achieve specific goals
• Resistant to information sharing
• Hierarchal decision making structure
• Members contribute dollars but not ideas
• Group defines programs as unique or original
Network-Centric Characteristics
• Focuses on expanding number of people/organizations reached
• Focuses on expanding capacity of network to perform
• More attention paid to information sharing
• Values social contact between staffs of partner organizations
• Facilitates rise of multiple leaders by enabling coordinated action
• Distributed power structure
• Leverages and shares resources with partners
• Leadership provides vision and energy to network
What's Next?
Networks are increasingly prominent in all aspects of our lives, from the shape of the global economy to the way teen-agers play online video games. The business sector recognized this shift years ago, and a library's worth of books and articles comment on one aspect or another of this "new paradigm." Government sees the trend, and a flurry of activity is currently going into e-government initiatives.
Remarkably, civil society – the not-for-profit, public interest sector – seems to only now become aware of this change. It is surprising, since network-centric thinking reflects the core values of civil society far better than the Old Power model. Civil society groups talk about increasing participation in democracy. They claim to promote individual initiative in collective action. They are committed to knowledge sharing, to the free flow of information. They promote the ideals of community and diversity in society. But the organizations themselves provide few opportunities for people to act in a way that reflects these values. Cynicism grows as people see advocacy groups through jaded eyes, thinking, "All they want is my money."
In the transition to network-centric models, the business and government sectors resources the civil society lacks to help them make the shift, though the costs of enabling technology continue to drop and a wide range of online solutions are now within the reach of advocacy groups.
However, other obstacles remain. At Old Power organizations, boards and major donors continue to demand a differentiation from other, similar organizations. Civil society remains a scarcity environment. There is a fear that the network-centric model requires a loss of control over organizational goals and resources. The approach appears to violate leaders' years of training about accountability, message discipline, and the measurement of outcomes. It carries the threat of chaos. By sharing knowledge, for example, a group risks losing its position as the most valued information source on a particular issue. How do you go back to your funders then?
Embracing New Power does not mean relinquishing control of an organization. Groups who become familiar with the approach will see that, strategically applied, it opens up numerous opportunities for growth. Most advocacy groups simply don't know enough about the network-centric model yet.
The ego-centric and network-centric approaches do have a creative tension that should be acknowledged: In the former, energy flows toward the center of the organization, while in the later energy flows outward. Leadership's role is to make sure that these forces are in balance. You don't want so much energy flowing out that the center empties. Rather, you need enough energy flowing in, toward the center, to keep your organization vital.
Community as Thinking Machine
Emergence theory experts like John Holland and Steven Johnson teach us that connectedness yields accelerated learning within a network and more efficient refinement of ideas and practices. Tomorrow comes sooner when people share information.
The building blocks of networked learning are the single transactions between individuals or organizations. The higher the number of interactions in a network, the more quickly innovations appear to meet challenges, iterate, and become refined.
Organizations that embrace emergence will adopt a network-centric model so that information is shared promiscuously, while encouraging its members and partners to do the same. Organizations that take the ego-centric approach choose, in effect, to trade emergence for traditional pedagogy, and use time-tested marketing and persuasive narratives to impart organizational knowledge within and beyond their walls. In a worst case scenario, ego-centric organizations trap institutional knowledge inside silos, withholding that knowledge from the greater community, until the organization is tactically positioned to benefit from releasing it.
The network-centric model asks each of us to trust that the network knows more than we do. It is understood that if we feed the network with knowledge, it will repay us with evolution. To take advantage of this approach, network-centric organizations will push information to the edges of the network as quickly as possible, to increase the number of interactions. Smarter organizations will have a higher "interaction quotient." The entire, interactive social network becomes a dynamic, creative thinking machine. The community collaborates on the generation of knowledge, coming together in a myriad of formations to solve problems.
The people of Planet Earth may or may not be as silly as the people in Rob's fable. The magnetism that draws us naturally into networks is as fundamental to human nature as the narcissism beneath our ego-centric habits.
We don't want to alarm any five-year-olds, but our own planet is not in great shape either. Terrorists and industrial lobbies have each found effective ways to balance autonomy and cooperation, and while most civil society organizations are not as desperate (or well-funded), they would do well to heed the lessons offered by their antagonists.
We won't solve the big problems through go-it-alone, competitive group activities. If we cannot find ways to balance network-centric and ego-centric practices, we will watch as the planet suffers the consequences. Our own Disney ending is not yet guaranteed.
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