Some of you
may be wondering why I am posting about Joe Trippi in a blog about open-source
leadership development. Some of you may simply be wondering – who is Joe
Trippi?!
Simply put,
Trippi is one of the people who changed the face of political campaigning
forever. He was Howard Dean’s campaign manager when Dean made a run for the
Democratic presidential nomination in the US back in 2003. Dean, a former
governor of the small state of Vermont, was by all measures very much an outside
shot for the nomination – but ended up as the front-runner until he was finally
eaten up by a wave of mainstream media and fellow-candidate attacks.
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| Joe Trippi |
The fact of
the matter is that the Dean campaign revolutionised the way politics is done in
the US. No longer could a big-money candidate fighting a traditional, top-down
campaign guarantee victory. Dean ran a grassroots campaign fuelled by his
legion of activists. His candidacy inspired them, but the activists soon took
over the campaign. They financed it via small donations. They breathed fire
into it with vibrant policy discussions. They worked for it by self-organising hugely
impressive local activism. It was not Howard Dean’s campaign to own – it was
collectively owned!
This is not
a story widely celebrated or shared. Perhaps it doesn’t fit in with the
dominant story of leadership we usually find in the mass media. It’s not about
a heroic individual – it’s about collective, collaborative effort winning
through. All the more reason that we should pay attention to the lessons.
Now, the
Internet has clearly enabled this kind of grassroots activity. Without the
technology we could never be talking in such revolutionary terms. But what
makes the technology work is the passion and hard work of the people who use it
for their ends.
It was the
genius of Joe Trippi to spot that the technology and desire for grassroots organising
were about to converge. In essence what Trippi did was kick-start a vibrant
online community, which soon spilled over into a mix of online and real-world
community. Blogs from supporters popped up – influential blogs which served as
open discussion forums. Next came the meetups, opportunities for supporters to organise
and share ideas face to face. Soon thousands, millions of people were engaged
in this growing community – becoming more politically engaged, aware and
active.
I have been
fascinated by the Dean campaign for a decade now, sure that what it had to
offer was more profound than perhaps most people realised at the time. Of course
then we had the Obama campaign, which adopted, modified and ran with many of
the same ideas. In terms of politics, I think many European countries have
fallen behind this online movement of collaborative political leadership – but it
is only a matter of time before all of that changes.
It was
fairly recently, when working with the University of Auckland’s student
leadership cohort, that it dawned on me that many of these ideas pioneered by
Trippi on the Dean campaign could be transferred to the realms of leadership
development. You see, our students are not held back by years of organisational
and institutional indoctrination about how things are done. The old rules and
models are there to be questioned. I’ll talk more about this wonderful group of
student leaders in the weeks to come. But let’s just say that the work they do
challenges orthodox boundaries and absolutely sees the Internet as a natural,
everyday means of organising and generating action. Such work may seem
extraordinary to people of my generation – but to them it is how stuff gets achieved.
As a result
of the hours of conversation with our students leaders, my mind drifted back to
Trippi and Dean. Leadership development and establishment politics seemed to
share striking similarities. Both seemed to serve an elite – those with the
status and money, by and large. Both had rather dated ways of communicating
with people – transmission rather than conversation. The question I asked
myself was … could leadership development be something that is devolved and
owned by participants, participants anywhere in the world? Participants whose
only condition of entry is that they have a passion for developing leadership?
Of course it could!
So as this
idea progresses, I still don’t have a 100 per cent clear picture of how it will
end up. I know that I would like this blog to be a safe place where people can
discuss and tell stories of leadership and leadership development. I know that
early next year I would like to start to organise meetups – to test whether
there are groups and individuals out there who would like to participate in
leadership development (for free) and would like to in turn pay back to the leadership
development community.
But in the meantime,
if you are interested in finding out more about Joe Trippi and his ideas, you
can buy his book by following the link. It is a readable, page-turner which
both provides an account of the Dean campaign and acts as an accessible
introduction to some of the ideas inherent in open-source activism: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Revolution-Will-Not-Televised-ebook/dp/B002FQOI3W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379635974&sr=8-1&keywords=joe+trippi
If you
would like a neat, 20-minute overview of Joe Trippi’s thinking, you can view a
2011 Ted lecture of his below.
As always,
comments and discussion welcomed. Maybe you think there are better models of
organising open-source leadership development. Perhaps you have stories of your
own where these types of engagements have worked outside of elected politics.
Let’s start the conversation!
-
Owain
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