Status Updates From Managing With Power

We exercise power and influence through the subtle use of language, symbols, ceremonies, and settings that make people feel good about what they are doing…it is management’s job to make people want to do what they need or have to do in order to make the organization prosper…it is the job of people interested in wielding power and influence to cause others to feel good about doing what we want done.

the very phrase, “decision making,” may be somewhat inappropriate. If social proof and social consensus are critical in affecting judgments and decisions, and if the process of building social agreement unfolds over time, it is probably more appropriate to think of decisions as “happening,” or “unfolding,” rather than being “made.”

How did power in the general office shift from engineering to legal and finance? In part by redefining the core competencies necessary to cope with the corporation’s environment.

The development and exercise of power in organizations is about getting things accomplished. The very nature of organizations—interdependent, complex systems with many actors and many points of view—means that taking action is often problematic. Failures in implementation are almost invariably failures to build successful coalitions.

the most precious resource in any organization is an incremental resource, not already spoken for, that can then be used to solve the organization’s current problems-problems that are more difficult to address using the current resources because of the conflict involved in reallocation.

Those who seek happiness will not acquire power and would not use it well if they did acquire it.

There are politics involved in innovation and change. And unless and until we are willing to come to terms with organizational power and influence, and admit that the skills of getting things done are as important as the skills of figuring out what to do, our organizations will fall further and further behind. The problem is, in most cases, not an absence of insight or organizational intelligence.