I finally got it the other day when someone said that A Bigger Voice is about creating change from the bottom up.  It used to be that change could only come from the top down or required a massive organizational effort from the bottom up (Think Civil Rights movement in the U S.)

With technology and virtual communities, companies realize that they need to listen to their consumers, “the bottom,” in addition to the CEO and VPs. Jeff Jarvis, a well-known blogger, illustrated this with his chronicle of interactions with Dell as an unhappy customer. Word spreads quickly on the blogosphere, about both good and bad stuff, but especially about bad stuff. The real news is that it can cause change. Two years after the Jarvis brouhaha, Dell is trumpeted in this posting for being proactive in listening to their customers and even adapting how they develop products based on customer input.

A little closer to home, my sister told me about how she and her husband had bought an appliance from a brand name company. Her husband did some research on the Internet after they returned home and found twenty-six pages of complaints on the item they had just purchased.  He promptly returned the appliance, with the twenty-six pages attached as the reason for the return.

And on the national scene, the Clinton and Obama campaigns are beautiful examples of top down and bottom up initiatives. Written in March 2008, this article by a top political columnist, talks about Clinton running the last campaign of the 20th century while Obama runs the first of the 21st century.  Clinton’s campaign was world-class by old standards. She gained allies at the top of the political hierarchy and created a network of high-profile bundlers. This quote from the article says it all:

“Obama one-upped her by understanding the new possibilities of modern communications. It wasn’t just that he outperformed Clinton by raising so much money online, he also exploited the social networking sites (and built one of his own), and understood the interaction between virtual communities and real communities.”

It’s no surprise that one of the founders of Facebook works on the Obama campaign.

This article from last week’s Wall Street Journal about fundraising efforts on both campaigns puts the power of bottom up vs. top down in real numbers. Clinton went after well-connected donors (the article cites a supermarket billionaire and a New York hedge fund executve) to further solicit other donors, using the method of bundling. Obama’s grassroots campaign targeted donors of $100 or less, even providing a “recurring gift” program that can debit a donor’s account as little as $25 a month.

The results are stunning. According to the article:

“Sen. Obama’s army of small donors “can raise a quarter million dollars in an hour,” concedes Yashar Hedayat, a Los Angeles businessman and a Clinton finance co-chairman. While he says he continues to raise tens of thousands of dollars a month for the campaign, he says the Internet has changed the face of fund raising. “The era of bundlers may be over — or at least rendered far less important,” he says.

“The Obama campaign raised …at least $1 million on each of nine different days [in March.] The total haul [for March]: $40 million. Clinton campaign’s …surpassed $1 million on only three days. For the month it raised $20 million not counting a $5 million loan the candidate made to herself.”

Obama has figured out “the way the world is going.” He’s tapped into technology and digital natives. Clinton is still thinking like a digital immigrant. These terms were coined in a white paper by Marc Prensky and relate closely to whether you are more apt to embrace top down or bottom up.

Digital immigrants think in terms of institutions and top down. They access gatekeepers to where power has traditionally resided–people who can get us access to the CEO, to the television star, to a political figure. Digital natives think in terms of community and bottom up. They don’t see hierarchy. They see access points. They bypass the gatekeepers and go straight to the users, the voters, the consumers, the employees.

We often need both approaches–top down and bottom up. But to only focus on top down is a mistake, and a costly one for individuals who want to have a bigger voice.

In fact, it’s because bottom up is now much more possible with technology that A Bigger Voice even exists.  Full Expression of remarkable wisdom to create stunning results in the world, through networking, technology, and community. In other words,

The power of one to attract many to change the world.

Enough said.