The Uses of Power

On one hand, the pow­er an orga­ni­za­tion’s lead­ers hold is cru­cial to achiev­ing pos­i­tive results and impacts. But it’s also true that that pow­er can also lead to chal­leng­ing dilem­mas, espe­cial­ly when it impru­dent­ly meets its coun­ter­part, resis­tance.

Con­sid­er, for exam­ple, the com­mon expe­ri­ence of man­agers who must imple­ment some kind of orga­ni­za­tion­al change — the new finan­cial report­ing require­ments; the new work man­age­ment sys­tem; the new DEI pro­gram; the new stan­dards for ser­vice. You name it, there is like­ly some­thing that weighs down the process so that both the peo­ple respon­si­ble for the change and those being affect­ed by it com­mon­ly report frus­tra­tion, frus­tra­tion being a safe way of nam­ing oth­er riski­er emo­tions such as anger, dis­ap­point­ment, guilt, and fear. Whether the resis­tance is expressed as pub­lic ques­tion­ing of the ini­tia­tive, pas­sive aggres­sive attempts to con­trol the results or some oth­er cre­ative snub, the expe­ri­ence is one of drag­ging an anchor, some­times to a com­plete standstill. 

Over time, the out­come of not deal­ing effec­tive­ly with resis­tance is that orga­ni­za­tion­al knots — ones that have prob­a­bly been around for awhile — become ever more deeply embed­ded in work­place cul­ture as pre­dictable rou­tines; for exam­ple a com­plaint that “we have too much to do,” and “what are you going to take off my plate so I can get this done for you?”

The Temp­ta­tion

In the face of resis­tance there is often an imme­di­ate temp­ta­tion for who­ev­er is lead­ing the change to become more heavy hand­ed. But the more a leader or lead­er­ship team tries to over­ride the resis­tance by demand­ing com­pli­ance through author­i­ty the more the issues of pow­er may become frus­trat­ing­ly “undis­cuss­able,“¹ uncon­scious, par­ti­san, siloed, and laden with neg­a­tive assump­tions about the motives of oth­ers — in turn increas­ing the like­li­hood that the change will fail. 

Clear­ly, lead­ers have the right and oblig­a­tion to to announce need­ed changes and to assertive­ly present the require­ment to move ahead, but sim­ply using author­i­ty to bear down on the resis­tance may very well set all the coun­ter­weights in motion. This is espe­cial­ly so when an orga­ni­za­tion is matrixed in such a way that one part is seem­ing­ly try­ing to change how anoth­er func­tions. If the pow­er strug­gles, sub­tle threats and mis­trust linger long enough, the polit­i­cal under­tow can lead to depar­tures of key players.

What can be done to lead change dif­fer­ent­ly? That’s a good and peren­ni­al ques­tion — but now the mess gets even messier. There is no short­age of change the­o­ries — or con­sul­tants espous­ing them, most of whom con­sid­er change a tech­ni­cal and engi­neer­ing prob­lem that can be guid­ed by exper­tise rather than an adap­tive prob­lem that requires deep rela­tion­al engage­ment and the man­age­ment of ten­sion.²

Qual­i­ties That Matter

To my mind, no mat­ter what the­o­ry you might adopt, there is prob­a­bly no escape from five things, the first four of which are: col­lab­o­ra­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty, dig­ni­ty and action.

Col­lab­o­ra­tion — The needs of those affect­ed are con­sid­ered to be as impor­tant as the needs of those who are exe­cut­ing the change. This means that there has to be a dia­logue about every­one’s inter­ests, not just their posi­tions³ and there is work to address as many of those inter­ests as pos­si­ble. Indeed, you’ll have to address, for exam­ple, com­plaints about the amount of time it will take and how much is on every­body’s plates and work through the need­ed trade-offs.

Cre­ativ­i­ty — Solu­tion-build­ing around how a change is going to take place is a cre­ative endeav­or. An oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage and work things out cre­ative­ly means not every piece of the process is going to fol­low exact­ly the same tem­plate, mod­el or time­frame. Wher­ev­er there’s con­flict, there’s a call for cre­ativ­i­ty to find a way through. You may need to start a series of small fires that can ulti­mate­ly con­nect rather than one big fire that burns even­ly across all domains in the same way. In this way, spe­cif­ic aspects of resis­tance can be pulled direct­ly onto the table, made dis­cuss­able and open as part of the prob­lem to be solved.

Dig­ni­ty — Peo­ple know how they feel treat­ed. Noth­ing can build resis­tance and kill a change effort faster than peo­ple feel­ing their dig­ni­ty has been vio­lat­ed. Put-downs lev­eled overt­ly or sub­tly at indi­vid­u­als or groups do not work. Treat­ing peo­ple indif­fer­ent­ly does­n’t work. Focus­ing on the way oth­ers should be does­n’t work. Blam­ing oth­ers for resis­tance or for what’s per­ceived as arro­gant, high-hand­ed behav­ior just builds walls that are tough to dis­man­tle. Instead use the process to build peo­ple up, encour­age them, lis­ten and invite many dif­fer­ent views, issues, ques­tions and feed­back. Giv­en the actu­al con­di­tion of the work­place, open­ness and dig­ni­ty may have to be proved again and again.

Action — Find doable steps togeth­er and make some­thing new; even if it’s a lit­tle thing — that moves every­one incre­men­tal­ly in the right direc­tion. Build on suc­ces­sive com­ple­tions time after time as a means of achiev­ing ulti­mate results. Too often there’s just an awful lot of talk about the change, rather than the doing of it, begin­ning now.

Behind these four qual­i­ties, a clear Vision of what the orga­ni­za­tion is, in fact, aim­ing for is often essen­tial. There’s a time and a place for open-end­ed emer­gence, but many changes demand con­crete ends. If they aren’t clear from the start there’s no way to eval­u­ate progress toward their achieve­ment and peo­ple can feel quite lost. 

Keep in mind, how­ev­er, this isn’t as much about a spe­cif­ic lead­er’s per­son­al vision as a shared vision of what the orga­ni­za­tion needs and why change is impor­tant for every­one. Just get­ting to that shared vision (for exam­ple with­in a lead­er­ship team) can be a big thing all its own as a first step togeth­er. To the extent the process of defin­ing it active­ly exem­pli­fies the first four qual­i­ties described here, the chances of mean­ing­ful change go up because the process then mod­els the change in work­place cul­ture that is also inte­gral to the goal. 

Defin­ing Power

You’ll notice that I’m not defin­ing pow­er as author­i­ty but as influ­ence to achieve align­ment — as the capa­bil­i­ty to bring peo­ple togeth­er, to fos­ter cre­ative solu­tions, to sup­port peo­ple and enhance their sense of dig­ni­ty and val­ue and to take action togeth­er based on a shared vision. So long as what­ev­er process is used to imple­ment change focus­es on these true sources of orga­ni­za­tion­al pow­er, I believe change can rep­re­sent an oppor­tu­ni­ty to which peo­ple are drawn, not an infu­ri­at­ing dis­rup­tion they will find a way to avoid. 

Obvi­ous­ly what I am pre­sent­ing is anoth­er the­o­ry of change (how­ev­er brief and over­sim­pli­fied) — and indeed I too am a con­sul­tant. But per­haps there’s some util­i­ty here, if only to diag­nose why change efforts in your own orga­ni­za­tion have stalled or sub-opti­mized them­selves in the face of best efforts and strong feel­ings. You could ask your­self, “Which of the five com­po­nents was or was­n’t there? What could we (or I) have done differently?”

Your Own Pri­vate View of Yourself

And you could go far­ther to think through what change the­o­ry you would cre­ate for your­self. In the end, your own the­o­ries, not only of change-mak­ing but of lead­er­ship itself count the most. After all, it’s what we see in our own pri­vate ways to grow, devel­op and change per­son­al­ly and inter­nal­ly that prob­a­bly have a bear­ing on the way we try to exe­cute change with oth­ers. And that may be why author­i­ty alone tends to fail in exe­cut­ing orga­ni­za­tion­al change. It does­n’t work any bet­ter that pure con­trol and self-dis­ci­pline work for per­son­al growth and change.

In this sense, the the­o­ry I’ve shared here is a pro­jec­tion of how I think change best hap­pens with­in me. If I want to change in some way, I have to col­lab­o­rate with all the voic­es that arise in me when con­front­ed by that need; I have to be able to sur­face resis­tance and become more cre­ative; I have to treat myself well, with dig­ni­ty and care, and I have to take action, some­times in very small steps to get start­ed. All of that has to be infused with a vision of the per­son and leader I want to be. If I can’t learn to exer­cise pow­er in this way with­in myself, I prob­a­bly don’t have much of a chance to exer­cise it very per­sua­sive­ly with others. 

All of this is about the uses of pow­er to cre­ate Align­ment, Cap­i­tal A — in the larg­er, more trans­for­ma­tive sense of the word.

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1. “Undis­cuss­ables” are issues that peo­ple talk about in with oth­ers, just not those who can actu­al­ly do some­thing about the problem.
2. See Ronald A. Heifetz and Don­ald L. Lau­rie, “The Work of Lead­er­ship,” Har­vard Busi­ness Review, Decem­ber 2001.
3. See Roger Fish­er and William Ury, Get­ting to Yes: Nego­ti­at­ing Agree­ment with­out Giv­ing In, Pen­guin Books, 1983.

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