Building a WikiLeaks That Would Last

I recently argued that while WikiLeaks' activities may be decentralized, it appears that its leadership under Julian Assange is not, and that makes the organization vulnerable. So, how might you build a better WikiLeaks?

Make it look more like Al Qaeda.

Given the controversial nature of its activities and the tendency to make powerful enemies, you’d need a WikiLeaks that could function well even when one or more pieces or people were out of commission. WikiLeaks would be better off if there were actually multiple WikiLeaks organizations. For example, WikiLeaks could be a network of regional groups unified by common goals, principles, and shared methods for doing the work, but functionally independent. In organizational parlance, this is what’s called an affiliate network, and it’s common in the nonprofit world and among social movements. Contrast an affiliate network with a branch structure where there are multiple locations that are wholly controlled by a central entity, kind of like McDonalds or Starbucks. (There's plenty of research about how affiliate models can best be used.)

This Lesson on Nonprofit Leadership Brought to You By MLK

How can you fix a rudderless organization without bringing in a real leader? In the nonprofit world, you can't.

It hasn’t gotten much front page treatment, but the Southern Christian Leadership Conference—Martin Luther King’s civil rights group—appears to be close to the end. There have been years of mismanagement, a lack of direction, some hanky-panky with funds, and a board rift that sent two board factions to court trying to decide which was the real one. After a judge ruled last year who was in charge, the plan was for Bernice King, MLK’s daughter, to become president. Well, now there’s a rift between the newly empowered board and King. Apparently she doesn’t want to be a figurehead, and the board wants to be in charge. I don’t necessarily think King was the SCLC’s savior. (MLK’s children have a pretty sketchy leadership history.) But I do know that in the nonprofit world, you never see a turnaround without a strong leader at the center. And interference from meddlesome boards is one of the main ways leadership is thwarted.

Why does leadership matter so much in the nonprofit world? In the for-profit world, making money is all that matters. There are many cases of mediocre business leaders turning around a company and managing to make money. (The history of U.S. car companies is full of these kinds of CEOs.) The typical nonprofit exists to address a social problem or serve a population (one place it can fail); it has to engage allies in addressing its core issues (a second place it can fail); it also has to please funders and monetary supporters (another place it can fail); and it has to keep mission-oriented employees engaged (yet one more place it can fail). That's a lot of things for a good leader to address, and virtually impossible to do successfully with weakness at the
center. 

Why WikiLeaks Won’t Make It From Here to There

Whether you agree or disagree with what WikiLeaks is up to these days, from an organizational perspective the group has a whiff of failure about it. Strangely enough, the champion of decentralized leaks to expose the world’s secrets seems too centralized around one person—Julian Assange—to be a lasting player once Assange is out of the picture.

WikiLeaks has explained where it’s trying to go:

Our goal is to bring important news and information to the public. We provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists (our electronic drop box). One of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth.

So how is Assange undermining this purpose? For an organization as controversial and dangerous as WikiLeaks to really last, its long-term aspirations can’t be dependent on a single person. Yet if you believe the New York Times (de facto WikiLeaks ally), Assange’s behavior makes it all about him. He’s the face of the organization, the guy who says he likes crushing the bastards, who lives undercover and constantly under threat of arrest or worse. And a thorough look at Assange's essays makes it pretty clear that the WikiLeaks founder has his own agenda, one that extends much farther than just exposing important secrets. He wants to make it impossible for governments or pieces of governments (Assange calls these conspiracies) to function by providing a constant torrent of leaks that prevent them from doing anything in secrecy.

Pretending To Be Adventure Boy: A Trip in a Blizzard (Part II)

Stopping in the ghostly arch

Day two of our trip to the Berkshires began with the blizzard still howling and virtually no visibility. We trudged our way over to the Mass MoCa complex, occasionally stumbling into snow drifts. (Luckily the museum did not close for the day, merely opened late.)

Mass MoCa is housed in a 19th century brick mill complex along a river. It has space for some of the largest museum art installations I’ve ever seen. They’re so big that the museum doesn’t keep most of them permanently. It rotates each art exhibition space around once a year. We first passed through a gallery of some vaguely creepy pieces covered with silk roses in dark wax and preserved peacocks hanging on a dead tree. Then up the stairs to something utterly surprising: a 150-foot-long gallery crossed by dozens of fishing filaments lit to create an arc of light points above a phantom tunnel. Wow. (The piece, Re-projection: Hoosac, by Tobias Putrih, echoes a local train tunnel known for its ghosts.)

Pretending To Be Adventure Boy: A Trip in a Blizzard (Part I)

Getting going to beat the snow

When it comes to braving extreme weather, I start thinking in a voice not so different from my grandmother: “There’s a storm coming? Snow? Wind? A blizzard? Why would you leave the house, Bubelah?”

So, should Lani and I drive across the state to the Berkshires on a day when there was a big ol’ blizzard warning? At least two different times—night before and morning of—we nearly said no. But it was 9 a.m. and the snow was just falling lightly. The main event wasn’t due until midday. We decided to act like hardy New Englanders (even though we’re really wimpy New Englanders) and get on the road. The grandmother part of me insisted that we pack plenty of food and add a snow shovel to our luggage, just in case.

The result: We zipped out of Boston and outran the storm for a good part of the day.

Not Getting There—Spammer Style

For a con artist, the old-fashioned pursuit of lucre could be a life-changing event...especially if it involves messages from an old flame and a sprinkling of Tuscany-inspired love poems.

If you’re someplace where you can let out a guffaw or two, check out this email interchange between a would-be conner and UK-based theater writer/director James Veitch. This con artist missed a few of the key rules of the trade (yes, there are rules of the trade), including the concept of a quick exit. I can’t remember the last time I got three full-throated cackles out of a New York Times piece.

[Photo courtesy of DitB]

"Just Show Up": The Uncle Paul Principle

Paul's focus shifted from the law to music composition

My Uncle Paul has a music studio set up in his house. The room is populated with drums – djembes, congas, snares, bass drums, and high hats. It’s also full of recording equipment he uses to compose his own music, meticulously assembled from samples and remixed with a computer and soundboard. Right now he has multiple albums – based on world beat, jazz, latin fusion, and whatever else suits his fancy – for sale through iTunes and other online services. What fascinates me is not where he is now but how he got there. Once he was a lawyer in Pittsburgh who dabbled in music; now he’s a musician who dabbles in law. That transition took more than 30 years. But it started with something pretty simple – just showing up.