I am quite surprised to see how much I have to say about power. This is a continuation of yesterday's blog.
In a dynamic power environment, where one is building a new institution or moving an existing institution in a radical direction, there is one key piece of advice: ‘do not take credit for yourself’. People are willing to work for you and help you if they can expect credit. Therefore it follows that if you are the person who usually takes credit, other people will not be helpful to you. We see the opposite quite frequently where a person who is building an institution or organization appears to take credit. I find this to be false information. It is often worthwhile putting a figurehead in public view, where the person with real power can manipulate the figurehead who takes the credit. In real power situations the powerful person is not visible and is not taking the credit. Think of Dick Cheney in the GW Bush administration. His power came from his deep understanding of how government agencies work and the histories of the people who ran them.
In a dynamic environment the power must be in the form of having a vision that unites people and is original. When creating something new it is not a zero sum game. One is always bringing in new supporters to the coalition and finding new people in institutions who support the vision. The vision may not necessarily be explicit and other people may not understand it very clearly but they have a sense of a new direction and a sense of the vitality that all people seem to want to imbibe. Vitality is the lifeblood of the dynamic organization. People choose friends and allies and partners when there will be added vitality in their own life.
I have not found money to be a source of power in itself. To the contrary, power is able to harness money to its purposes in both static and dynamic environments. That sounds ridiculous to people who have not spent their life dealing with power or dealing with wealthy people.
Power attracts money not vice versa. We can see this most clearly in the famous statement of Jesse Unruh talking about a good politician. He said ‘you must be able to take their money, drink their booze and screw their women and still vote against them’.
As I mentioned earlier, honesty counts. You do not tell the money people they have your vote because of the money, boos or women you just tell them you will take their interests into consideration. In a dynamic environment you do not get into a situation where you have conflicting power battles. In a political zero sum world the powers know they have only bought your consideration.
With that I have exhausted the few trivial matters that I can explain about power.