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

by Jeremy Heimans

(Something in Return + Higher Purpose) x Participation = Participation Premium

The work of behavioral economists Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon, and Dan Ariely helps us understand the dynamics behind companies like Xiaomi. They have identified what they call the “IKEA effect,” a tendency of people to place a higher value on self-made products. Their key observation was that when people put together furniture from a self-assembly kit, they tend to seriously overvalue their (often poorly constructed) creations. To test whether the phenomenon holds more broadly, they designed an experiment with a group of people directed to fold origami swans. They asked those who did the folding—“the builders”—and others who were not involved—“the non-builders”—to place a value on the creations: “While the non-builders saw the amateurish creations as nearly worthless crumpled paper, our builders imbued their origami with value.” The effect was stark: “Builders valued their origami so highly they were willing to pay nearly as much for their own creations as the additional set of non-builders were willing to pay for the well-crafted origami made by our experts.”

People place a higher value on objects and experiences they are able to shape.

The irony here is clear. These almost-a-million bosses ended up imposing less oversight than the old power construct of a handful of key financial backers with a lot on the line; it seems plausible that a more traditional investor setup might be better at pushing Roberts to actually deliver, rather than just selling the promise of cockpit decorations.

Kickstarter describes the riskiness inherent in its projects as a “feature, not a bug.”)

It’s no surprise, given the deeply unrewarding “user experience” of being a taxpayer, that people feel increasingly skeptical of and remote from government. But let’s imagine that a

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. Otherwise you’ll never really unleash people’s energy and enthusiasm. This does not mean an organization has to embrace anarchy. But it does mean that once you have carefully structured the ways your communities can engage, you need to be prepared to be surprised if they lead you in an unexpected direction.

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.

As any seasoned movement builder can tell you, the greatest viral successes and most impactful moments usually come after months and years of consistent investment in your crowd.

After years of cultivation, the Lego community is now a critical piece of business infrastructure, as important to the company as its factories or intellectual property—something that it can count on in large and small ways.

Talking about “win-win” models is easy to do, but striking the right balance between crowd and company is “hard work to make it work on both sides.” This commitment came from the very top of the institution—and has never been a stunt.

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. The shapeshifter figure will likely not be the person who executes day-to-day the big structural changes that make transitions happen, but will be the spiritual and symbolic figure who, steeped in tradition, is ideally placed to guide the institution toward a new identity and a new relationship with its communities.

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.

He was effective at navigating internal systems and culture, painstakingly built up community management at Lego from one lonely hire to a whole function in the organization, and worked to integrate his team (and the wider community they represented) with the product designers, marketers, and other “incumbents.”

Bevan is trying to channel the energy that clearly exists inside her system, and turn it from occasional stunt to a cultural norm.

Her aim is to create a “community of change agents,” who operate in what she calls the “zigzag-y” place between old and new power. These people are not necessarily linked by their positions, nor by their specialties, but by a genuine interest in mobilizing their communities to effect better health outcomes.

“problem solvers” and “solution seekers.”

The “solution seekers” got their name from a heated debate that Hila Lifshitz-Assaf observed, where a highly respected scientist rebuked reluctant colleagues: “Your main responsibility is to seek for solutions and they may come from the lab, from open innovation, or from collaboration, you should not

care! You are the solution seeker!”

They shifted the boundaries of their worlds to invite people in. For this group, success wasn’t that you personally had the answer, but that you were open to experiment, ready to find answers in unexpected places and from unexpected people.

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

A company like Lego has developed such a valuable community of super-participants because it has been prepared to genuinely embrace the world outside its four walls and beyond its payroll. Unlike NERC, which dipped its toe into new power waters and retreated at the first sign of a wave, the organizations who get this right are those who dive deep.

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 skills unique to leadership in a new power world.

Signaling is the way a new power leader makes a crowd feel more powerful through his speech, gestures, or actions. Obama’s rhetoric of “we are the ones we have been waiting for” was classic signaling, designed to stoke his supporters’ sense of agency and willingness to participate. The pope’s request for, rather than bestowal of, prayers worked in the same way.

Structuring is how a new power leader puts in place structures and practices that enable the participation...

Shaping is how a new power leader sets the overall norms and direction of her crowd, especially in ways that go beyond her formal authority.

The conventional wisdom that encourages our masters of the universe to shapeshift into masters of empathy—aligning themselves with the twin moons of humility and authenticity—does not go far enough. In fact, it can distract leaders from the more difficult task of moving the focus away from them and onto their communities, a skill mastered by the three leaders profiled below.

her job is to use her power in a way that “creates power for more people.”

Comstock is trying to push power down, to “distribute the decision-making process as widely across the network as possible. In effect, to empower individual ‘cells’ to relay signals and respond to their local conditions as they see fit,” as she puts it. This has meant redistributing people to staff up local markets around the world, as well as attempting to shift cultural practices like feedback.

By sourcing new ideas from unexpected places, Comstock is blurring the line between the crowd and the corporation.

In the official “rules” for wannabe TEDx organizers the word “must” appears forty-eight times. There are twenty-seven appearances of “should” and twenty-one of “cannot.”

The platform TED launched in response to this interest was simple and elegant. Translators would post their translations, other translators would act as “reviewers,” and a “language coordinator” (whose role was to oversee all content in a specific language: French, Spanish, Urdu, and so on) would be the last set of eyes on it before it was published. The project has now seen almost 100,000 translations published in over 100 languages by over 20,000 volunteers.

Buurtzorg’s motto sums it all up: “How do you manage professionals? You don’t.”

Platforms can do better. Take the example of Care.com—the world’s largest platform for caregiving. With more than 24 million members, Care.com is where millions of families in the United States and nineteen other countries go to find nannies, babysitters, and elder care. Its founder, chairwoman, and CEO, Sheila Lirio Marcelo, a Filipino-American entrepreneur, had the same early incentives to squeeze her caregivers that Uber had to squeeze its drivers, but she took a longer view. Marcelo herself was raised by Filipina nannies, and she understands the importance of their being treated with dignity and respect. As she told us: “If we want to sustain [this] for the long run you have to build a business that can’t be driven off the backs

Instead, she chose to build a “people-to-people company,” championing the rights of the caregivers on her platform.

Kickstarter will care for the health of its ecosystem and integrity of its systems. • Kickstarter will never sell user data to third parties. It will zealously defend the privacy rights and personal data of the people who use its service, including in its dealings with government entities… • Kickstarter will not cover every possible future contingency, or claim rights and powers just because it can or because doing so is industry standard. • Kickstarter will not lobby or campaign for public policies unless they align with its mission and values, regardless of possible economic benefits to the company. • Kickstarter will not use loopholes or other esoteric but legal tax management strategies to reduce its tax burden. Perry told us about the conversation

study at the University of Pennsylvania found that Kickstarter projects have created 8,800 new companies and nonprofits, and a remarkable 29,600 full-time jobs. The platform has generated more than $5.3 billion in direct economic impact for those creators and their communities. Perry thinks many more entrepreneurs can be moved to build camels, not unicorns: “Really it’s to allow the generation that’s coming up now, which I think has a lot of this inclination…to be able to know that there’s not just one way to do it.”

might take us away from a life of participation farms, and toward one that is less extractive and more socially generative: platforms that meet the “circle test.”

The University of Colorado, Boulder’s Nathan Schneider is one of the leaders of a growing (but still quite academic) movement that is championing what he calls “platform co-ops,” democratically run and governed cooperatives reimagined for a world of peer-based technology platforms, not just farms and factories.

But we need something different: a world where our participation is deep, constant, and multi-layered, not shallow and intermittent. Think of this world as the “full-stack society.”

To create the full-stack society, we need to dream up entirely new models that make us feel more powerful and more connected to one another in all our guises:

We all need to build models—and seek out models—that help everyday people like us gain a sense of ownership and connection to one another and to society at large. “Participation” needs to be much more than the website that allows you to point out occasional potholes in the street; it needs to be a constant and compelling experience that keeps people working together on the things that matter.

It will require that those on the side of the angels get a lot better at delivering a killer user experience, sticky feedback loops, and a compelling set of incentives as they work to restore vitality to our essential social functions.

An ACE idea: An idea designed so that the crowd will take hold of it and spread it. It is actionable because it is designed to make a user do something, connected because it makes a user feel part of a like-minded community, and extensible because it is structured with a common stem that encourages its communities to alter and extend it. Blend power: To bring together old and new power in ways that reinforce each other. Bridge: A new power change agent who can meaningfully connect with the new power world, making the practical “jumps” between old and new power. A bridge’s work is structural. A digital beard is often mistaken for a bridge, but actually provides cover for a risk-averse organization and resides on the margins of influence. Camel: A new power platform or organization that delivers economic returns that are less spectacular than those of its alter-ego the “unicorn,” but serves an important social function and can sustain investors and its community for the long term. The circle test: Asks whether the impacts of a new power platform, on those both inside its triangle and within its wider circle, are positive. Connected connectors: People who are connected to one another, share a worldview, and are influential in their reach. For a new power movement, identifying and cultivating the right connected connectors can be the difference between takeoff and fizzle. Crowd-jacking: When a campaign is separated from its original intent through the whimsy of the crowd. (Tak...

Signaling: The way a new power leader makes a crowd feel more powerful through his speech, gestures, or actions. Structuring: Putting structures and practices in place that enable participation and agency. A new power leader “structures for participation.” Super-participants: The most active contributors to a platform, and often those who create the core assets that power the platform and create its value. Taking the turn: To move from old to new power. “WeWashing”: A phrase coined by our friend Lee-Sean Huang to describe the way brands sometimes use the language of the crowd and appear to invite its participation without having any meaningful interest in engaging with it.