Page 175 - The Resilient Organization

162 Part Four: Step 3. Rehearsing a Culture of Resilience

employed more than 100,000 people, such talent and time fluidity would
be a critical source of competitive advantage. For the marketplace to
become a success, however, three conditions had to be maintained:

1. Any employee could join any project of his or her choosing part-time.
2. Any project that attracted more than three volunteer-amateurs would
have legitimacy and, thus, the right to proceed initially (although it
could later be combined with another project).
3. Project members were asked to keep a record of discovered ideas that
simultaneously held promise for themselves, personally, and for the
company. This information could then be gathered across projects
and analyzed strategically for emergent patterns.

Thus, there is value to a marketplace beyond the individual projects—it
is a source of strategic insight externally, on the wider business environ-
ment, as well as internally, on workforce interests and capabilities. (How
many managers actually know what really motivates their employees
beyond adding money to the paycheck? How many managers know of the
passions of their employees, if not listed on a résumé and not otherwise
made visible by their immediate responsibilities?)
Another example of amateur activity comes from a very different
domain of activity. The Dean for America (DFA) presidential campaign
mobilized large numbers of volunteer-activists who were committed to
bringing change to the political landscape in the United States (see Postcard
No. 2 in the next chapter). The Dean for America campaign functioned
simultaneously as an organization and as a broader community that encom-
passed numerous geographically dispersed amateurs, many of whom were
operating outside the direct control of the campaign. The campaign broke
Democratic Party fund-raising records by employing innovative ways of
harnessing small contributions, including a “thermometer” concept, one
popularized by the United Way. The Dean campaign’s staff members adapted
this concept by posting online a graphic of a baseball bat and player, where
the bat served as the marker that indicated fund-raising progress. As a way
of further supporting the fund-raising bat, the Dean campaign’s software
programmers created an application that enabled the community activists
to create their own “personal bat” Web pages. These pages provided the