New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World—and How to Make It Work for You

by Jeremy Heimans

Power, as philosopher Bertrand Russell puts it, is the “ability to produce intended effects.”

Old power works like a currency. It is held by few. Once gained, it is jealously guarded, and the powerful have a substantial store of it to spend. It is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven. It downloads, and it captures. New power operates differently, like a current. It is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. It uploads, and it distributes. Like water or electricity, it’s most forceful when it surges. The goal with new power is not to hoard it but to channel it.

New power models are enabled by the activity of the crowd—without whom these models are just empty vessels. In contrast, old power models are enabled by what people or organizations own, know, or control that nobody else does—once old power models lose that, they lose their advantage. Old power models ask of us only that we comply (pay your taxes, do your homework) or consume. New power models demand and allow for more: that we share ideas, create new content (as on YouTube) or assets (as on Etsy), even shape a community (think of the sprawling digital movements resisting the Trump presidency).

The future will be a battle over mobilization. The everyday people, leaders, and organizations who flourish will be those best able to channel the participatory energy of those around them—for the good, for the bad, and for the trivial.

Far from the organic free-roaming paradise the early internet pioneers imagined, there is a growing sense that we are living in a world of participation farms, where a small number of big platforms have fenced, and harvest for their own gain, the daily activities of billions.

Yet the rise of new power is shifting people’s norms and beliefs about how the world should work and where they should fit in. The more we engage with new power models, the more these norms are shifting. Indeed, what is emerging—most visibly among people under thirty (now more than half the world’s population)—is a new expectation: an inalienable right to participate.

New power models, at their best, reinforce the human instinct to cooperate (rather than compete) by rewarding those who share their own assets or ideas, spread those of others, or build on existing ideas to make them better.

In contrast, those with old power values celebrate the virtues of being a great (and sometimes ruthless) competitor, defined by your victories.

Those with new power values are less committed but more affiliative—and that’s a paradox many old power institutions are now grappling with.

This belief in collaboration between everyday churchgoers is at the heart of the church’s success. As Bolz-Weber puts it, “We don’t really care about doing things well, we just care about doing them together.”

But there is something new happening, which we saw on a grand scale with the Ice Bucket Challenge, and which is reshaping how we think about spreading ideas. The job now is not simply to create sound bites, but what we call “meme drops”—whether images or phrases, across every type of media—that are designed to spread “sideways,” coming most alive when remixed, shared, and customized by peer communities, far beyond the control of the meme creator(s).

What these examples share are six qualities the Heaths see behind a sticky idea: Simple—simplicity is the key Unexpected—surprises you and makes you want to know more Concrete—creates a clear mental picture for people Credible—uses statistics, expert endorsements, etc. Emotional—appeals to deep human instincts Stories—takes you on a journey that helps you see how an existing problem might change

With a hat tip to the Heath brothers, we propose that many of the most successful ideas and communications strategies today add ACE to SUCCESS. ACE stands for the three design principles key to making an idea spread in a new power world: Actionable—The idea is designed to make you do something—something more than just admire, remember, and consume. It has a call to action at its heart, beginning with sharing, but often going much further. Connected—The idea promotes a peer connection with people you care about or share values with. Connected ideas bring you closer to other people and make you (feel) part of a like-minded community. This sets off a network effect that spreads the idea further. Extensible—The idea can be easily customized, remixed, and shaped by the participant. It is structured with a common stem that encourages its communities to alter and extend it.

“If your goal—as is ours at BuzzFeed—is to deliver the reader something so new, funny, revelatory, or delightful that they feel compelled to share it, you have to do work that delivers on the headline’s promise, and more. This is a very high bar. It’s one thing to enjoy reading something, and quite another to make the active choice to share it with your friends.

When we think about how ideas spread in the twenty-first century, the experiment makes it clear that they spread sideways. A big idea is made stronger if it is designed to pass between small groups of friends. MIT’s Alex “Sandy” Pentland, who detailed the Facebook voting experiment in his book Social Physics, told us: “People actually begin changing behavior when [an] idea gets validated by their community, rarely when it has not.”

Whether you’re working to get elected to your local school board, launch an online community, or just trying to build buzz around your new business, these are the five key steps to starting and growing a flourishing movement today. Step 1: Find your connected connectors

Think of this group as the “connected connectors,” those people who share a worldview, are networked to one another, and are influential in their reach. For any new power movement, identifying and cultivating the right connected connectors is often the difference between takeoff and fizzle.

Step 2: Build a new power brand

The Create tool was a little gimmicky, no doubt, but it signaled the way Airbnb saw its community—as a place where you could both belong and be yourself. That’s consistent with Marilynn Brewer’s behavioral science concept of “optimal distinctiveness,” which suggests that the right recipe for building an effective group is making people feel like they are part of it and that they can stand out in it.

Step 3: Lower the barrier, flatten the path

The single most important factor behind the early success of GetUp was how easy it was for people (frantic, information-overloaded, but well-intentioned twenty-first-century people) to participate. No member dues, no pledges of allegiance to a platform, no immediate requirement to take to the streets. Rather, GetUp asked people, on joining, to sign a single online petition on just one issue they cared about.

This small change in tactics made a spectacular difference. When Hazare provided a local number to call and asked Indians to show their support for his campaign against corruption, his numbers went from 80,000 to 35 million.

Step 4: Move people up the participation scale

Having a structure in place to move people up the participation scale is critical even in the early stages of building a new power community.

Within seventy-two hours of the launch of the live stream, the governor had a rather remarkable change of heart. He decided to cancel the demolition until a new school could be built. And after six more months of persistent campaigning by Meu Rio, the governor wholly capitulated: the Friedenreich would be saved.

Anyone building a crowd should be on the lookout for storms that might galvanize their base, and be prepared to act on them within minutes or hours, when the need is greatest and people’s emotional response is at its peak.

Any new power community has three key actors—its participants, its super-participants, and the owner or stewards of the platform. Think of these as three corners of a triangle.

But what Scott Heiferman, Meetup’s founder, quickly found was that the organizers of these free groups were less likely to take their obligations seriously—and sometimes wouldn’t even show up to the events they were hosting—if they didn’t make a financial commitment to being a host. So now Meetup’s primary business model is a modest ($10–$15/month) charge to their super-participants to manage a group. It has been the making of the platform.

It isn’t just policymakers, academics, and ethicists who should be thinking about applying the circle test. It’s us, as participants and super-participants. These platforms are empty vessels without us, and we determine whether they thrive or falter. As we choose whether or not to participate, we have an obligation to consider more than whether new power communities delight or make things easier for us, but also whether they are helping or harming the world all around us.

Star Citizen offers something in return in the form of the promised game and ships and higher purpose in joining the mission to revive the PC sim. Participation supercharges both: it offers you citizenship in a lively community of fellow dreamers, and even offers the chance to change the game itself. Whatever you’re “selling” today, there is great advantage in providing all three returns. To lay this out as an unscientific (but useful) equation, think of this as: (Something in Return + Higher Purpose) x Participation = Participation Premium

They have identified what they call the “IKEA effect,” a tendency of people to place a higher value on self-made products.

BrewDog is a Scottish start-up that has revolutionized its industry—and made it big—through bold and savvy experiments in how to raise money, raise a crowd, and brew beer.

As Smart learned, it is very tough to mobilize a Citizenry of low-stakes investors to question a commitment for which they have very high hopes. A conspiracy of optimism is hard to unravel.

Glenn frantically Googled “how to make a viral video” and found his way to Benjamin Von Wong, a young videographer.

For old power organizations wishing to move into the new power world beyond the occasional initiative or stunt, there are four fundamental issues to consider as they set out to “take the turn,” as shown in the decision tree on the following page. Imagine if NERC had asked itself these questions in deciding when and how to turn to new power. Strategy: The first question to consider is whether new power really fits with your strategy. What problem are you trying to solve that your old power repertoire can’t handle?

Legitimacy: If engaging new power makes strategic sense, the next question is whether you already have—or are prepared to build—trust and credibility in the space you want to engage.

Control: Meaningfully incorporating new power—and getting something meaningful out of the result—requires a willingness to give up at least some control and accept a range of outcomes, including an answer you might not view as ideal.

Commitment: Too often, old power organizations see new power as an occasional, peripheral, and intermittent activity. But getting the best results requires a willingness to cultivate the energy and enthusiasms of a community of people over an extended period, which NERC had no plan or intention to do. If new power enthusiasm is simply a flavor of the month, or the passion project of an unsupported mid-level millennial, it is much less likely to succeed.

As organizations take the turn, four important characters tend to emerge. Here are the four—alongside four false prophets who are often confused with them.

The shapeshifter (vs. the disrupter) The shapeshifter is a new power change agent in old power garb, a figure with unimpeachable institutional credibility who smooths the path to change and sets an example for the timid or resistant to follow.

Leading an old power organization through transition isn’t about “breaking shit.” It requires a tricky blend of tradition and innovation, past and future. Those efforts need shapeshifters who can show—by example—how to get the best of both worlds.

The bridge (vs. the digital beard)

More than one old power organization has found itself with a “chief innovation officer” or “director of strategic initiatives” parachuted in by a CEO desperate to uncover some magical revenue line, or to serve as public evidence that her leadership really is engaging with the new world. But despite good intentions, these people often end up as “digital beards,” providing cover for a risk-averse leader...

Instead of the “beard,” what organizations really need is a “bridge,” that person who can meaningfully connect his organization to the new power world, making the practical “jumps” between old and new power.

The solution seeker (vs. the problem solver)

The super-participant (vs. the stakeholder) No new power team would be complete, of course, without those people who create huge value in the community: the super-participants.

The Crowd Leader (top right) combines a new power leadership model with a commitment to, and articulation of, new power values. The Crowd Leader wants to do more than channel the power of her crowd; she wants to make her crowd more powerful. The Cheerleader (bottom right) champions new power values like collaboration, transparency, and participation, but leads in an old power way. He either isn’t able or doesn’t want to genuinely distribute power. The Castle (bottom left) pairs old power values with an old power leadership model—this is the traditional hierarchical and authority-based model of leadership most of us grew up with, and which is widespread in sectors like the military, business, and education. The Co-opter (top left) deploys a crowd and skillfully uses new power tools and tactics—but does so in the service of old power values, and to concentrate power for himself.

Trump is an example of what we call the Platform Strongman: a leader who co-opts a digital crowd and deploys new power in order to advance largely authoritarian values.

The missed opportunity for Obama was that he had no real transition plan for his crowd. All the energy and commitment that people felt had nowhere to go next.

The administration then made the fateful decision to fold its organizing infrastructure—renamed Organizing for America (OFA)—and its more than 13 million members into the Democratic National Committee, becoming part of the official party machine.