Webinar on power, leadership and change, for the Strategy, Execution and Leadership meetup, Adelaide, July 2020 For more details on the Strategy, Execution and Leadership meetup, see https://www.meetup.com/StrategyExecutionLeadership/

1. Power, Change and
Leadership
Tom Graves, Tetradian
Strategy, Execution & Leadership Meetup, July 2020

2. Hi.
I’m Tom.
(exploring
the question
of power…)

3. These days
I’d describe myself as
a maker of tools for change...
successful change depends on
successful leadership and
successful application of power...

4. About this webinar...
Aim: Make practical sense of power
in relation to leadership and change
• Part 1: A question of power
• Part 2: A question of change
• Part 3: A question of leadership

5. • What is power?
• What is change?
• What is leadership?
• How do they interact with each other?
Summarise your current views on these themes
Explore: A quick check-in…

6. Part 1:
A question of power...

7. A question:
What is power?

8. - who has it, or doesn’t have it...
So many arguments about power
- yet still no clarity on what it is?
- who should or shouldn’t have it...

9. One common model of power...

10. The most common outcome of
a transactional (‘win/lose’) model of power…
(this is Not A Good Idea...)
“If I feel powerless,
all I need to do
to make myself powerful
is disempower someone else!”

11. Most common models of power
don’t help, because they focus most
on fear of and/or loss of power…
...and they still don’t tell us
what power is...

12. Let’s start again
with a physics-based definition:
“power is the ability to do work”

13. WARNING:
for anything that involves people,
we often must expand that definition:
“power is the ability to do work
that we choose to do”
(without that expansion, we risk
defining self-slavery as ‘power’...)

14. If power is ‘the ability to do work’,
what is ‘work’?
Short-answer:
work is anything on which
people expend their energy

15. Dimensions of work…

16. Dimensions of work…
–Physical: work on physical stuff
–Conceptual: work on information and ideas
–Relational: work on relations and emotions
–Aspirational: work on identity, purpose and
personal / collective meaning
...and any combinations of these dimensions...

17. Power-from-within
“the only source of power is from within the self” (source: Starhawk)

18. Mutual support: power-with
“assist each other to find power-from-within” (source: Starhawk)

19. Define responsibility
as ‘response-ability’…
“the ability to choose and enact
appropriate responses
to, in and for the context”

20. Dynamics of power-with
virtuous-
cycle

21. BUT…
in many social definitions of power:
“power is
the ability to avoid work...”

22. Dimensions of work avoided…

23. Power-from-within and power-with
contrasted with
power-against…
- power-under (‘abuse’)
and power-over (‘violence’)

24. Power-against: power-under
“offload responsibility onto Other without engagement or consent”

25. There’s also a ‘lose/win’ version
of power-under:
“take responsibility
from the Other, without their
engagement or consent”

26. Power-against: power-over
“prop Self up by putting Other down”

27. There’s also a ‘lose/win’ version
of power-over:
“prop Other up
by putting Self down”

28. Mutual power-against: codependency

29. We may also see this
happening with technology systems
such as
a system that runs ‘open loop’,
offloading responsibility to others
to close the loop on its behalf

30. Dynamics of power-against
vicious-
cycle

31. WARNING!
Power defined as ‘ability to avoid work’
means needed work is not done...
and because work is not done, this leads
to an addictive downward-spiral…
from power-under to power-over
to increasingly-extreme forms of power-over

32. This warning especially applies
when the type of work being avoided
can only be done by the Self...
such as learning, relating, recovering,
building a sense of identity and purpose

33. Other examples:
empowerment and
disempowerment...

34. ‘Empowerment’, in theory?

35. ‘Empowerment’, in reality?

36. Other examples:
sympathy and empathy...

37. Sympathy as dysfunction

38. Pseudo-empathy as dysfunction

39. Power-with: real empathy

40. An overview on power...

41. Power: Work being done/avoided…

42. Dimensions of work done/avoided

43. Dynamics of power (SEMPER)
virtuous-
cycle
vicious-
cycle

44. In most human contexts
there is no ‘win/lose’...
- the only real choice we have is:
either everyone wins (power-with)
or everyone loses (power-against)
(the challenge then is how best to work with that fact...)

45. • How does this (power-with vs power-against)
differ from your current model of power?
• What is your own power-from-within?
• How do you support power-with in business?
• How to dissuade power-against in business?
• What might you need to change in business?
Explore: Power

46. Part 2:
A question of change...

47. Beware the politics of change:
People don’t resist change,
they resist being changed...
...especially if the change will benefit
only someone else, at own expense...

48. The elements of change...

49. The dance of change…
‘The Dance of Change’,
Peter Sengé et al.
(Nicholas Brealey Publishing,
1999; ISBN 1-85788-243-1)
Describes the key ‘people-
issues’ that arise during
transformative change, and
what to do about them

50. Dimensions of work

51. Domains of work…

52. Domains of change…

53. The structure of change...

54. Identifying purpose and context…

55. Setting scope and boundaries…

56. Planning, preparation…

57. The work of real-time action…

58. Reviewing, learning, improving…

59. The work of learning to improve…
1: What was
supposed to
happen?
2: What
actually
happened?
3: What was the
source of the
difference?
4: What can
I learn to do
differently?
5: What can we
learn to do
differently?
Continuous
improvement
(Adapted from US Army After Action Review) Introduction https://youtu.be/55s4CebiTaw

60. Work at the point of balance…

61. Linking together
the domains of change...

62. Do the right things…

63. Do the right things right…

64. Do the right things right, better

65. • How does change happen in your business?
• What dimensions of work in your business?
• What domains of work in your business?
• What domains of change in your business?
• What learning arises from change?
• How to do the right things right, always better,
through change in your business?
Explore: Change

66. Part 3:
A question of leadership...

67. No, we can’t avoid the politics…
POLITICS
NO POLITICS!
Power, politics and leadership are deeply intertwined
- we must always be careful about the politics…

68. Define leadership as…
“an activity that guides
Self and/or others in work”

69. Leadership takes place everywhere,
in many distinct forms…
hence situational leadership...

70. Work: Lead within domains…

71. Work: Lead between domains…

72. Work: Lead to hold the balance…

73. Are managers
always the leaders?
Answer: not necessarily
- mostly they just manage resources...

74. Managers as leaders?

75. Beware of organisational models
that assert that managers
are the only ‘leaders’…
because all we’d get from that is
resource-management, not leadership...

76. When leadership
is incomplete or absent…
anti-patterns for failure
are likely to arise
- an outcome of essential types of
work being avoided...

77. Avoiding work: jump to plan…

78. Avoiding work: jump to action…

79. Avoiding work: ‘Waterfall’…

80. Avoiding work: ‘Agile’…

81. To avoid those antipatterns,
leaders must apply and adopt
that five-part pattern of change-domains
at every scope, every scale,
for every type of content or context,
in every lifecycle or time-scale,
every change, everywhere, fractally...

82. Full pattern of ‘work-to-be-done’…

83. Blame and other ‘power-against’
will arise when the results of
work-not-done show up…
power as ‘the ability to avoid work’
is addictive, because
it literally doesn’t work...

84. The role of leadership:
minimise the power-dysfunctions
push away from ‘power = avoid work’
push towards ‘power = do work’
guide the dynamics of change

85. Manage the dynamics of power
virtuous-
cycle
vicious-
cycle

86. Guide the dynamics of change…

87. Leadership and power:
"Leadership is not defined
by the exercise of power
but by the capacity to increase
the sense of power among those led.”
- Mary Parker Follett, 1924
(Notice which definition of power is in use at each moment...)

88. • Who are the leaders in your business?
• Are managers the only acknowledged ‘leaders’?
• What do leaders do, and how do they do it?
• What fail-antipatterns occur in your business?
• How do your leaders avoid those antipatterns?
• What forms of governance do your leaders use?
Explore: Leadership

89. Wrapping up...

90. Power is
the ability to do work
- and not
the ability to avoid work...

91. A useful model of power…

92. Dimensions of work…

93. Domains of change…

94. Leaders guide change…

95. Leaders support real power…
virtuous-
cycle
vicious-
cycle

96. …and prevent any descent into…

97. Power.
Change.
Leadership.
All working together.
That’s our aim here.

98. Review your summary from back at the start…
• What is now your view on power?
• What is now your view on change?
• What is now your view on leadership?
• What is now your view on their interactions?
• If anything is different from before, how will you
apply those amended views in your business?
Explore: Power, Change, Leadership

99. What have you learnt from this?
How will you apply that in
your business, family, community?
Questions to take away...
What services on this would assist
your business and your clients?

100. Further information…
Book:
‘Power and response-ability: the human side of systems’
(Tetradian Books, 2008; ISBN: 978-1-906681-14-2)
Book-details: http://tetradianbooks.com/hss/
Weblogs and slidedecks:
Post ‘On power’,
http://weblog.tetradian.com/on-power/
Other posts on power and responsibility:
http://weblog.tetradian.com/category/power-and-responsibility/
Slidedeck ‘Manifesto on power in the workplace’,
https://www.slideshare.net/tetradian/power-and-responseability-a-
manifesto-for-the-workplace
Contact:
Twitter: @tetradian
Mail: info@tetradian.com

101. Further information…
Book:
‘Change-mapping: connecting business tools to manage change’
(Tetradian Books, 2020; ISBN: 978-1-906681-14-2)
Book-details: https://www.changemappingbook.com/
Paperback: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Change-mapping-
Connecting-business-manage-change/dp/1906681406/
E-book (EPUB or PDF): https://gumroad.com/tetradian
Contact:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tetradian/
Twitter: @tetradian
Mail: info@tetradian.com

102. Thank you!