Is the Leaderless Occupy Wall Street Movement Working?

I recently read a newspaper article about the Occupy Wall Street movement and the lack of official leadership that has city officials, police, neighborhood community boards and others attempting to communicate with the movement extremely frustrated.  It seems the original organizers have purposefully maintained this "leaderless" culture in order to give everyone a voice and equal input into decisions. As the article explained, they rejected a top-down "vertical" leadership structure from the get go. They hold nightly meetings in Zuccotti Park (their home base in New York City) where decisions are made by consensus. At the outset of the movement this type of decision making was OK but as the number of protesters grew the meetings have become unwieldy, lasting hours.

 

Additionally they are confusing the population who are watching. Sure we have an overall sense of what they are angry and disgusted at - aren't we all for that matter? Yet for many who are watching the movement, there seems to be a lack of understanding around exactly what the group wants to accomplish or see happen. It was shared in the article that even finding themselves in Zucotti Park was an accident - landing there after an initial march up Broaday and deciding it was a nice place to settle. All of this seems to point to a lack of leadership. Lack of clear vision, lack of planning, lack of execution, lack of accountability.

 

Collaborative leadership is something we believe wholeheartedly in at SoundBoard. We have seen over and over again the impact collaborative environments have on productivity and the overall success of a business or group. However, an organization still needs to know what they are working toward, have a plan of action to get there and understand how their role contributes to that end result.  All of this takes leadership, without leadership creating a vision and a plan of action, its just a group of people spinning their wheels with no real destination - or just a group of people camping out in a park for an undetermined amount of time.

 

Most successful social movements in history have had strong, passionate, inspiring leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Ghandi and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  The Occupy Wall Street movement has obviously created a great deal of momentum.  They also have an incredible amount of passion around their ideals. It may now be time for someone to step up and take a leadership role to take them to the next level.