We’ve had a lot of discussion, both online and off, about the V in VRM. It speaks one kind of relating, in the economic sphere. Which is just one sphere.
Britt Blaser has spoken often of the kind of RM that begins with a G — GRM for Government Relationship Management.
We’ve also talked about why we start with the individual in our work with VRM. Why not start with groups, and group empowerment? Especially since “social” is such a hot theme?
The answer is that relating starts with individuals. Even though it always involves more. One’s relationship with one’s self may be interesting to a shrink, but it’s too small for building a society, an economy, a politiy.
Erik Cecil, a friend and freshly minted blogger, almost poetically captures something about relating in this paragraph from his latest post:
IntERdependence is the engine of democracy; it creates the nanostructures of new economies. People lined 137 miles of railroad track, therefore, not to see some new Hercules. They came to see in their new President a reflection of their individual importance reflected back to them in the President they just elected. He not only moved the power of democracy to the edge, but opened the path back to the middle. Reverberating throughout the crowds was the music of interdependence. Let the new freedom ring.
We’re in new territory here — one we’re just beginning to make for ourselves.