PART IV

Power Dynamics: How Power Is Lost and How Organizations Change

It is easy to get caught up in the micro-level descriptions of sources of power, the diagnoses of power and of situations, and the discussions of the strategies and tactics for employing power, and lose sight of what this book is really about—getting things done in organizations. We are interested in power as a means to make both ourselves and our organizations more effective and successful. This final section of the book begins by providing some cautionary ideas about how power is lost. One way of understanding power and its dynamics is by considering how power erodes. We will see in the first chapter of this section how even the mighty fall, and consider what this means for us as we think about our own personal relationship to power and influence.

The penultimate chapter considers, in some detail, how power dynamics can be productive or unproductive for the organization. This book is about managing with power, and it is also about managing power. It is important to consider how power dynamics affect organizations, and perhaps even more critical to understand the problems and potential in managing power dynamics productively.

The final chapter reminds us that power is of more than academic interest. Freeways get built, or don’t, the blood supply becomes contaminated, or not, products are introduced, or technological skills are wasted, depending on our ability to get things done. But more than ability is involved. It is not only political skill, it is also political will, the desire or at least the willingness to be “in the arena,” to use Richard Nixon’s phrase, that matters for affecting the world around us. In the first chapter I discussed our ambivalence about power, the tendency to think of power as something somehow evil or dirty, something to be avoided. This ambivalence must certainly be increased when we do, as we have done in this book, a detailed, clinical diagnosis of power, its sources, and how it is used. A useful analogy is looking at almost anyone through a magnifying glass. Anyone, regardless of how beautiful, will appear less attractive if we examine the individual with enough magnification to see the pores, the small imperfections, that at a distance form part of an overall gestalt. In much the same way, social interaction can appear to be unattractive when we consider in detail the various ways in which power and influence are developed and exercised.

This last section, and particularly the last chapter, remind us that in the world as it exists, for the many reasons we have examined in this book, getting things done requires understanding and using power and influence. Thus, the book closes by noting that perhaps there is a greater sin than making mistakes or influencing others—the sin of doing nothing, of being passive in the face of great challenges and opportunities, and even great problems. It is insufficient to understand power, and where it comes from, how it is used, and why. This knowledge should increase your own power, and with that empowerment, your willingness to get involved. Look around. The problems of your organization or, for that matter, your city, are more likely to result from failures in implementation or failures to take action than from doing too much, too quickly. Being personally effective requires at least two things: knowing how to get things done and being willing to do them.