How do you gain power, use power, and identify those who have power, so that you may protect yourself against them? Part two of three in a series on power in business.
Absolutely enjoying this series. The formulation around understanding what others want, gaining control over things they want, and then trading for what you want is quite useful. Some observations that relate to this:
Looking forward to hearing othersâ thoughts on the topic and watching this series progress.
Thank you @Roger.
I was looking around for an example of how this framework isnât necessarily Machiavellian, and can be said to be a form of street smarts, and then I stumbled on one of Henrik Karlssonâs latest pieces.
The first section is so good that Iâm just going to quote all of it (with the bold bits being mine, for obvious reasons):
1. It is possible to turn a mediocre job into a great one
I was the only person who applied for the job at the gallery because it was so shitty: it was basically selling coffee all weekends with lousy pay and no vacations during summers. But in 2021 we had recently moved to Denmark, so I had no professional network and didnât speak the language, and Rebecka had just been born, and we needed the moneyâso I couldnât be picky.
I also felt that the place had, as real estate agents say, âgood bonesâ: it was beautiful, they had 6 exhibition halls, and it was a 25-minute bike ride from home.
For most of my career, I have worked short gigs or at projects that I startedâthe longest stretch Iâve been employed was, I think, 4 months at a bio lab when I was 19. No, thatâs not right; I worked 8 months in a school when I was going down a rabbit hole about education in 2016/17. My working model has been that being employed kind of sucks. But this time, since I knew I couldnât afford to quit anytime soon with the baby and all, I figured I could try treating it like one of my projects. So instead of selling coffee, I looked into how we could streamline the cafĂ© and the cash register so that the volunteers who help out at the gallery felt comfortable doing my job, then I made myself a small office where I sat down to analyze the business and figure out how to improve it. You can imagine how popular this was. I had to backtrack for a few months after the board told me to get back to the cafĂ©. And this was a good lesson for someone who is used to being self-employed: at an institution, you canât just do what is best, you also have to build trust and coordinate with others so you are on the same page. This, however, doesnât mean that you should abdicate your judgment and get in line.
I like the approach Sholto Douglas expressed in his interview with Dwarkesh Patel:
If Iâm trying to write some code and something isnât working, even if itâs in another part of the code base, Iâll often just go in and fix that thing or at least hack it together to be able to get results. [âŠ] I think thatâs arguably the most important quality in almost anything. Itâs just pursuing it to the end of the earth. Whatever you need to do to make it happen, youâll make it happen. [âŠ] Iâm just going to vertically solve the entire thing. And that turns out to be remarkably effective.
Ie. you donât say, âThis is my job and that thing is outside my areaââno, if the value you are trying to promote requires you to go outside your role and learn new skills and politick to get the authority to go ahead: then that is your job.
Iâm not at the level of Sholto Douglas, but I figured I could at least try. So I made an agreement with my boss, who liked me, that she would let me sit in on the board meetings, and I began mapping out who was who and what they wanted and made sure to talk to all stakeholders when they passed through the gallery, and in 6 months I had a good enough model of what their values and goals were so I could align myself to the mission and make legible to them what I was doing. As my boss learned to trust me, she began to say that my role was âdo whatever you think is right,â and eventually, after about a year, â. . . and you work whenever you feel like it.â (It helped that the year I started was the inflection point when the revenue, which had been shrinking or muddling for 5 years, began growing again; this wasnât all my work, but it made my boss trust me.)
For the last 2.5 years Iâve mostly set my own agenda, and Iâve worked in uneven sprints and bursts, sometimes doing 70-hour weeks (my contract was 20 hours per week), and sometimes staying home for 10 days to write essays. This bursty way of working fits my temperament well, and Iâve genuinely loved this job in a way I didnât think Iâd ever love a job.
A bunch of my friends envied my role. But no one else applied.
I loved this articulation of power and the consequences of taking it seriously.
I often frame these ideas through the lens of influence and the pro social framework you suggest - if you can understand what people want, you can create win-win possibilities. But this is because I donât have the will to exert power to gain control (or I donât want things enough to deploy such power).
You can now identify players who are much better at power games than you are, and avoid them, or at least be careful around them.
This is mostly my approach to power. I avoid such people because I recognize Iâm not as ruthless as them. I still vividly remember a meeting with a Google exec where the niceties dropped and he made it clear where I stood (his exact line when I spoke up? âThe grown-ups are talking hereâ delivered in a withering tone. It was even more cruel because I was older than the other VP in the room). I avoided him after that. He is tremendously successful and I think he even likes me but I knew if I ever crossed him, he would destroy me without a thought.
That quote also reminded me of a joke in NBA circles wondering why anybody ever trades with Daryl Morey (GM of the Philadelphia 76ers) or Sam Presti (GM of the Oklahoma Thunder) who regularly win every trade theyâre in. Other GMs should just read that warning above, recognize theyâre not as good at power, and stop dealing with them.
Becoming more creative at trading control for something that you want
This was always my weakness with power. I wasnât clear on what I wanted and I was very bad at seeing the power I had and trading control to get what I wanted.
Ironically, my âbestâ use of power was probably as the guerrilla leader early in my career where I destroyed the credibility of the leadership team. I had control over employee sentiment, and made it clear I would torch them if I didnât get their respect. And I did it because I was young and idealistic, and the whole company went up in flames. Perhaps that result was why I was wary of power plays in my career - perhaps if I had been able to use that leverage to become an executive at that firm, Iâd have learned a different lesson about power where it created good outcomes for me instead of seeing it as a tool of mutual destruction.
Later in my career, I became good at the first aspect of power (learning what people want) and applied it to become influential, but never became powerful as I didnât have the will to use the information. That may be why Iâm more suited to be an advisor or coach, and provide that information to leaders who do have that will.
After reading the Y Combinator case yesterday, I tossed Chaos Monkeys on my âskip itâ pile
Then the newsletter showed up, and this bit
I donât necessarily recommend the book â one reviewer called it âa massive bonfire of burnt bridgesâ â but truthful retellings of power are sufficiently rare so as to be remarkable when they get published.
motivated me to put it on my âskim itâ pile. Because a reviewerâs incendiary mixed metaphor might be an authorâs expression of personal power. Or, âact of self actualization,â to put it more politely
Nice post! I want to say a bit about âGaining control over what they want.â
A lot of the times, you donât need to gain control (as conventionally defined). The ability to destroy something is usually much cheaper and almost as effective in power terms. I really need to stress this because thinking in terms of âsomeone has control over X, therefore they are the only one with power over itâ is going to lead to a bad time.
For obvious reasons itâs unwise to talk about this stuff too much!!
Aye, which is why Iâm bringing this series to a close rapidly.
In fact, writing this entire series has made me very uncomfortable, and Iâve not done a lot of marketing about the series for this reason.
Various people I know are adept at using power, and yet deny all awareness that there is any âpower stuffâ going on. This is people at various levels of management but especially in the middle*. Either they just exercise power instinctually, or they have other reasons for not talking about it.
*I guess the power in the middle of organizations isnât the focus of this series, but still is worth noting, especially in the context of Stan Slapâs comments illustrating useful power-in-the-middle (VPs who keep the wheels on), and damaging power-in-the-middle (a sudden influx of padding that prevents stuff getting done).
This is an excellent topic to mull over during the year-end holiday season, great fun for all the family.
Joking aside, this topic makes me uncomfortable and thatâs why Iâm going to spend some time staring into the abyss on it because it cuts very close to home in several areas both within and outside of work.
I am cautiously optimistic because itâs an excuse to go back to old papers by Mary Parker Follett. I think the various uses of power and looking at the context of bitter labour disputes circa 100 years ago will be instructive.
This might be a bit strong of a statement, but I do think that serious leaders cannot be ignorant on their use of power. A slightly sobering anecdote from Avery Pennarun goes:
At my first startup, we tried to run the development team as a flat organization, where everyoneâs opinions were listened to and everyone could debate the best way to do something. The overall consensus was that we mostly succeeded. But I was shocked when one of my co-workers said to me afterward: âOur team felt flat and egalitarian. But you canât ever forget that it was only that way because you forced it to be that way.â
Because this topic is publicly viewable (all topics in the Blog Comments category are public), Iâm shifting some discussion to Why does discussion of power make us uncomfortable?