Joe Nye and Adam Kahane on the Future of Power

Harvard professor Joseph Nye wrote a nice brief piece in the Chronicle for Higher Education that talks about the U.S.’s evolving role as a world power and that articulates his distinction between hard and soft power. He writes:

In the United States, we tend to focus on the hard power of coercion and payment. This is partly a reflection of American political culture and institutions. No politician wants to appear “soft,” and Congress finds it easier to increase the budget of the Pentagon than of the State Department. This bias has been reinforced by prevailing scholarship.

Realism adequately represents some aspects of international relations. But states are no longer the only important actors in global affairs; military security is not the only major outcome that they seek; and force is not the only or always the best instrument available to achieve desired outcomes. Indeed, the relationship among advanced postindustrial countries is one of complex interdependence. This deep network of transnational ties among democratic societies means that the absence of any overarching government has very different effects in such contexts than realism predicts.

It is not solely in relations among advanced countries that soft power plays an important role. In an information age, communications become more important, and outcomes are shaped not merely by whose army wins but also by whose story wins.

In the 21st century, a smart foreign policy will combine the hard power of coercion and payment with the soft power of attraction and persuasion.

I think Nye is mostly right, but while he’s advocating different approaches, his frame is still oriented around one party imposing its will on another. It’s what Adam Kahane describes in his book, Power and Love, as power-over. Kahane (strongly influenced by the philosopher, Paul Tillich) contrasts this with power-to:

Power has two sides. The generative side of power is the power-to that Paul Tillich refers to as the drive to self-realization. The degenerative, shadow side is power-over — the stealing or suppression of the self-realization of another. Tillich recognizes both sides: “Power actualizes itself through force and compulsion. But power is neither the one nor the other. It is being, actualizing itself over nonbeing. It uses and abuses compulsion in order to overcome this threat. It uses and abuses force in order to actualize itself. But it is neither one nor another.”

Degenerative power-over arises out of generative power-to. When I am exercising my power-to and I feel myself bumping up against yours, and if in this conflict I have the capacity to prevail over you, then I can easily turn to exercising power over you. My drive to realize myself slips easily into valuing my self-realization above yours, and then into believing arrogantly that I am more deserving of self-realization, and then advancing into my self-realization even if it impedes yours.

Our opportunity is to create a world where it’s not about imposing one’s agenda on others, whether by coercion or persuasion. Instead, it’s about converging on a set of shared goals and about co-creating our path toward achieving those goals. It’s about activation and empowerment, power-to instead of power-over. It’s about seeing the world as “we” rather than “us” versus “them.”

In doing so, we need to have faith that we will not lose ourselves to the whole, but that the whole will become a manifestation of us as individuals.

Sports and Collaboration

My friend, Andrew, recently gave me the book, Scorecasting. Just started reading it (thank you, Kindle), and I came across this excerpt:

Exploring the hidden side of sports reveals the following:

  • That which is recognizable or apparent is often given too much credit, whereas the real answer often lies concealed.
  • Incentives are powerful motivators and predictors of how athletes, coaches, owners, and fans behave — sometimes with undesirable consequences.
  • Human biases and behavior play a pivotal role in almost every aspect of life, and sports are no exception.
  • The role of luck is underappreciated and often misunderstood.

As with most things having to do with sports, these principles also apply to anything related to collaboration. If only we had as much data about our work lives as we do about our favorite sports teams.

Off to watch the Lakers….

People Matter

I spent the day processing everything that’s been happening over the past week, work-wise:

  • I spent two days at the Network of Network Funders meeting, thinking with and listening to a group of funders who are trying to apply network-thinking in the nonprofit space
  • I also spent a lot of time on my primary project these days, helping a Fortune 500 company understand how it can improve how it collaborates at a global scale

Here’s the irony:

  • The funders are thinking in terms of networks, but they’re struggling to let go of a more traditional organizational mindset
  • Meanwhile, the CIO of this company (the sponsor of our work) is thinking in terms of his organization, but his mindset and actions are all “post-organizational.” He has a very network-oriented approach in how he’s leading his organization, but he’s not mired in the language and complexity of networks

I’m working with Kristin Cobble on this project, and she had a similar take on our client, but entirely different language. She described him as “an organization learning consultant’s dream client.”

We discussed how we came to a similar conclusion through our different lenses and language. And what we decided was this: Call it whatever you want — organizational learning, networks, whatever. At the end of the day, it all boils down to the same thing: People and practice.

Grady McGonagill and I have an ongoing argument about paradigms. He thinks that the way the world is now — rapid, technology-induced change and an exponential rise in complexity — requires a new paradigm of leadership. It makes sense on the surface, but I disagree. I think the old paradigms of leadership are fine. We just need to be more intentional in practicing them.

This, to me, is the timeless paradigm in which we now — and have always — lived:

  • Trust matters
  • Relationships matter
  • Communication matters
  • Reciprocity matters
  • Space matters
  • Learning matters
  • Practice matters — way, way more than process
  • Feeling alive matters

If we just stripped away our tools and processes and frameworks and crazy language and simply focused on practicing everything on this list, the world would be a much better place.

Somatic Computing

A few months ago, I sat down to a meeting with Kristin Cobble, Gwen Gordon, and Rebecca Petzel. We were all on our laptops, pulling up notes and sending off last minute emails. As the meeting was about to start, we all closed our laptops with a deep breath, looked at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing.

We had all noticed the same thing at the same time, and we had communicated that to each other nonverbally. Closing our laptops had completely shifted the energy of the room.

Space matters. It affects our bodies and their relations with the things around them, and there is wisdom and energy inherent in that.

Most of our interfaces with digital tools were not invented with our bodies in mind. They were created to serve machines, and for the most part, they haven’t evolved much. We’re starting to see that shift now, with mobile devices, with touch, and with gestural interfaces. When our technology starts to augment our body’s natural wisdom, we are going to see a huge shift in its power.

My friend, Anselm Hook, gave a great talk at AR Devcamp last year, where he explored the notion of developing software somatically (what he’s calling the “Slow Code movement”):

The technology we need to build these sorts of interfaces exist today, and I think we’ll see an inflection point soon. But that inflection point won’t come because of enterprise-driven markets, despite the opportunity that these interfaces hold. Those markets simply aren’t big enough. It will come because of games.

This is no great insight, but I think that many of us are remarkably blind to it, and it’s worth reminding ourselves of this over and over again. It’s no accident that Kinect — one of the most remarkable and successful research-driven products for personal computing — came out of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 group and not one of its other divisions.

Appreciating Execution

I have the pleasure of working with Rebecca Petzel on two of my current projects. She has great instincts and passion around collaboration, and she’s a thinker, a doer, and a learner. She’s already very good at many things, and if she stays on her current path, she’s going to be a force.

On our teams, we expect everyone to uphold their commitments. Rebecca is responsible for a long list of well-defined tasks. She does them all, and she does them well, without supervision.

I was synthesizing some notes today, and I needed to draw from a lot of prior work. Everything I was looking for was exactly where it was supposed to be. That was Rebecca’s doing. And even though this was a straightforward, ongoing task and she was “just doing her job,” I greatly appreciated her effectiveness at doing it.

Frankly, I know a lot of people who are smart. Only a small percentage of those folks are good at execution. I’m lucky to work with people who are good at both. Even though I expect everyone on our teams to live up to their commitments and to execute effectively, I don’t take it for granted when it happens.

I love what Stanford professor Bob Sutton says about execution: “Implementation, not strategy, is what usually separates winners from losers in most industries, and generally explains the difference between success and failure in most organizational change efforts.”