I was a skeptic. DK4 seemed like a step backwards in many ways: incoherent, frustratingly complicated and aesthetically unpleasing.....but it will allow the powerful, generous enterprise that is Daily Kos to expand its impact on the nation's political dialog by many orders of magnitude.
A great man, E. F. Schumacher, once said:
The structure of the [large] organization can then be symbolized by a man holding a large number of balloons in his hand. Each balloon has its own buoyancy and lift, and the man himself does not lord it over the balloons, but stands beneath them, yet holding all the strings firmly in his hand. Every balloon is not only an administrative but also an entrepreneural unit. The monolithic organization, by contrast, might be symbolized by a Christmas tree, with a star at the top and a lot of nuts and other useful things underneath. Everything derives from the top and depends on it. Real freedom and entrepreneurship can exist only at the top.
Therefore, the task is to look at the organization's activities one by one and set up as many quasi-firms as may seem possible and reasonable.
I have just had the experience of setting up my first group: Systems Thinking. With this hands-on experience, and a week of seriously trying to figure out DK4, I now see what I suppose Kos saw all along:
Daily Kos has become an influential voice. A voice from out of the mainstream, often denigrated by the pundits but a highly visible contributor to the national dialog. There are other liberal blogs but this is the 500-pound gorilla. This is good and bad. As long as it was contained within the structure of DK3, the scope of Kossack initiative was strictly limited. The medium itself created friction for anyone who might wish to organize action or extended dialog. Many succeeded but at the cost of a great deal of voluntary effort.
Markos was doing fine. There was no particular personal reason for him to change the highly successful status quo. But if the GOAL was to influence the national conversation, Daily Kos had reached a point of diminishing returns. It was his choice to either:
1. hold onto the rather high level of central control dictated by the very structure of DK3, but see the blog never develop much beyond its present point. It was and would be an organization ultimately depending on the initiative and creativity of one man. Such an organization is ultimately limited by that man's fallibility and energy .....or
2. take the rather courageous step of relinquishing an important level of control, with the result that DKos is no longer ONE blog: the group structure along with many other new features mean that it's potentially a THOUSAND blogs, each under the ultimate control of Markos and the site administration, but each capable of generating its own initiative and energy and each capable of organizing and effecting change in the country at large. This is a tree full of fertile pods about to burst over the landscape and plant progeny in places we cannot predict or imagine.
Markos chose the second course and I honor him for it. It is never easy to see something that you, yourself, conceived and brought to reality pass beyond your full, effective control. Yes, he is still the boss and as top admin can still bring an end to negative developments, but by ceding a great deal of initiative to the membership through the medium of groups he has made it quite likely that the impact of his brainchild, Daily Kos, will increase a thousandfold.
Updated by bmcphail at Tue Feb 22, 2011, 11:46:21 PM
E.F. Schumacher's Principles of Large-Scale Organization
1. The Principle of Subsidiarity. Every function should be carried out by the lowest unit fully capable of doing so.
Member-organized groups seem a very effective example of this.
2. The Principle of Vindication. Lower units must be defended.
It appears that outside of wide limits the content of groups is only enforced by the group admin.
3.The Principle of Identification. The lower unit must have an individual statement of profit and loss and balance sheet. Measurements of success specific to the unit must be available.
The improved availability of site statistics at many levels is a feature of DK4.
4. The Principle of Motivation. To the maximum extent possible, lower units should work on things that interest them.
Group organized and run by members seem to carry this out well.
5. The Principle of the Middle Axiom. When possible, top authority should devise directives that find a middle path between micromanagement and losing control of the organization's direction, focus, and effectiveness. This one is hard to state well because it is specific to cases and requires a high level of creativity and judgment from management.
Time will tell if the new structure of DK4 carries out the Middle Axiom. Affirmative evidence will come in the form of political and cultural results.