It’s a word that’s been woven into everything I’ve written for CommsOffensive325.  But I’ve studiously avoided using it because it scares senior managers, and because even business communicators have an aversion to using it in a business context.

But following a comments exchange with old pal and sparring partner Steve Crescenzo about its role in the whole social media discussion, I will now unsheathe the word of whose name I dareth not speak.

“democracy”.

For me, an intelligent discussion of employee engagement and social media is impossible without an implicit or explicit acknowledgement that organisations have democratic as well as hierarchical traits.  And those things that cannot be achieved or explained through hierarchy can be understood by looking at them from the framework of democratic systems where individual decisions and voluntary groups can make things happen.

Crescenzo spoke of the idea of “democratizing” organisations, and considered the idea questionable.  But democracy is to a business what water is to a ship.  Not what drives the ship per se—but it is a big part of what determines its internal and external operating conditions. 

Social media and employee engagement aren’t about making organisations more democratic.  They’re about recognising how democratic they are and always have been.  If anything, they make the need to understand the democratic dynamic in organisations more real, and they offer some visibility into how that democratic dynamic actually works.

I’ll be saying a lot more about this in the months to come.  For what it’s worth, having run political campaigns for ten years and worked inside political organisations and movements for longer still, the similarities between business and politics are considerable and hinge on the role of individuals and groups to make at least some of their own decisions, and to communicate their opinions openly and selectively.