Symphony Magazine published an article in its July/August issue entitled Creative Democracy that features a conversation with WorldBlu’s Traci Fenton and the top leaders of WorldBlu List awardees Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and BzzAgent. The interview focuses on the nature of democratic leadership and how democratic workplaces are uniquely able to encourage innovation and tap the creativity and abilities of their employees.

Graham Parker, Executive Director of Orpheus, Dave Balter, CEO of BzzAgent, and Fenton discuss the tremendous benefits of empowering employees and distributing leadership within an organization. They note that operating democratically is challenging, but that the resulting product is better than if they operated with a traditional command-and-control environment.

In the article, Parker says, “I often get a lot of furrowed brows from people who think that democracy is easier, that it’s a way of avoiding things and putting all the decisions to the people. At Orpheus, it’s much harder to do things the way we do it, but I think the rigor produces a result that is simply of higher quality than if we had chosen to do it a different way.”

To read the rest of the article, click here.