Business communicators often feel uncomfortable when the topic of electoral politics comes up.  Even a relatively de-toxified piece like IABC President Julie Freeman’s recent commentary on Senator Barack Obama’s rhetorical style drew howls from old-line practitioners who give the impression that we business communicators can only legitimately seek lessons from within our own discipline. 

 

But as a blogger who doesn’t have to answer to thousands of offendable dues-payers, and as a committed Barack Obama supporter and contributor, I’m going to take the liberty here of pointing out some observations about this campaign I think you could find relevant, and perhaps even some lessons that could add some value:

 

·                     A Perfect Storm of Communication

The Presidential Nominating process represents what could be the purest, freest and most overwhelming display of communication hardware, software, strategy and executional skill seen on this planet in many years.  Every conceivable medium will be used—from MySpace and Facebook to door-to-door canvassing to robocalls to coffee gatherings in living rooms to t-shirts to bullhorns on street corners.  While focused on the nearest primary states, this carnival and carnage of communication will command daily ink in nearly every newspaper on the planet, and the rapt attention of Americans and non-Americans rooting for their favorite, seeking the doom of the hated rival, or some combination of the two.  

Even though this isn’t our branch of the communications tree—the stakes, the nature of the combatants, and the advent and integration of the new social communication technologies make this campaign the most significant display of communications firepower in decades.  Its impacts will be felt in our industry, perhaps sooner than we think.

 

·                     Leader versus Manager

 

While in organizational communication, we continue to struggle with the distinction between leaders and managers (having mostly yielded to the questionable practice of allowing our employers to call senior managers ‘leaders’), voters are having no such struggle.  

 

The Republican side begins to tell the tale.  Republican Mitt Romney’s attempts to portray himself as a leader after a career as a successful manager in the business and policy worlds left him with a muddled image, one which a consistent record of ideological inconstancy only helped to exacerbate.   In contrast, surviving Republicans John McCain and Mike Huckabee have half-jokingly commented about their managerial deficiencies, McCain claiming economic illiteracy and Huckabee touting his mastery of miracles over math.

 

Far more telling, however, is the juxtaposition of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.  At nearly every available opportunity Hillary Clinton exclaims “I AM READY TO LEAD.”  But the loudness of such claims contradicts the entire ethos of the Clinton candidacy.  Her slogan ‘Making Government Work For You” speaks not to leadership but to management. 

 

Her claims at being the rightful choice for the Presidency are about ‘policy’ and ‘experience’—but very little in that experience speaks to leadership—the ability to inspire people, build coalitions, and let people to get on with the business of blazing the path you are pointing them towards. 

 

Barack Obama, on the other hand, gets this.  And so do his supporters, myself included.  Unlike most politicians who use the term “we” to mean “I” in the middle of a campaign, Senator Obama uses the term “we” to mean “we.” Rather than “Making Government Work For You”, Obama’s slogan is “Yes We Can.”  Whenever I see Senator Obama speaking on YouTube, invariably, and without apparent prompting, thousands will interrupt the speeches with shouts of “Yes We Can”. 

 

Anyone who needs clarity about the distinction between management and leadership need only to look at Obama and Clinton, and for that matter, Romney, Huckabee and McCain.

 

·                     Staff are paying attention

A final point in this little trifecta—the US presidential race is a leading topic of water-cooler conversation, and I’m sure that’s not just the case in the Netherlands.  What this means is that if people are paying attention to the race, in effect, they are paying attention to an exercise in organizational communication on a grand scale.

If you are looking to innovate, or use techniques or tools that are being used in this race, it cannot hurt to reference that as you roll those techniques or tools out, it may well be worth referencing that you learned a trick or two from the fireworks going on in the states.  It may be more interesting to your clients and users than saying “This was first referenced in the Boxotex case in the Strategic Journal of Management Communication.”

These aren't the only things worth paying attention to--and as the Democratic race reaches its potentially earth-shaking climax, there will be doubtless more lessons to learn.  But I do ask that communications pros think both as citizens and as pros as we consider the impact of what is happening here.  There is no reason we can't get huge value out of what is happening now.