Who Really Matters
The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege and Success

Commentary About Who Really Matters:

"A Group is Its Own Worst Enemy."
Clay Shirky, expert on social software, describes the innate limitations of virtual communities: Despite their own espoused good intentions, they all have Core Groups. (April and July, 2003).

The core group has rights that trump individual rights in some situations. This pulls against the libertarian view that's quite common on the network, and it absolutely pulls against the one person/one vote notion. But you can see examples of how bad an idea voting is when citizenship is the same as ability to log in.

Financial Gazette (South Africa)
A "Human Resources Talk" that uses Core Group theory as a starting point for diagnosing the health or illness of an organization.

"This core group gives a character to the organisation and if not properly managed it can develop into a sick personality that makes the organisation sick as well."

I Have Been Reflecting…
Hal Richman (who provided a great deal of bibliographic help for Who Really Matters) holds an impromptu Core Group session at his home in Halifax in June 2003 and wonders:

Why can't our work with clients be this fun and engaging? What we need to do is invite clients into our sandbox, make our incredibly rich networks available to them and move away from an often lifeless consulting model.

Looking Forward to the Book
Phil Leggiere, in his blog Noosphere Blues in April 2003, articulates some of the political-philosophy implications of the Core Group material:

No matter how philosophically anti-elitist, all groups are the product of some kind of elite. But elitism doesn't necessarily imply a rigid hierarchical order, or a closed exclusive caste or class system, or even a power-monopolizing coterie…

Kleiner: John Sumser's November 2002 summary from Interbiznet, the online newsletter for electronic recruiters, in which he worries that the Core Group theory is simplistic:

While we mull the validity of the idea, we suggest that you think about it as well. If the idea that organizations exist simply to satisfy the needs of their core leadership catches on, we'd expect a corresponding growth in the sorts of employment contract revisions described by Work 2.0.