Power and other Needs

As I learned more about business, I came to realize that power did not equate to seniority. Indeed, the most senior people often worked under the most constraints. I found it was helpful to remember that when trying to understand why a leader took a particular action.

Power can be defined as the opportunity to make a difference. Note that it is an asset. It is like money, it is only useful when you spend it. And, just like money, many uses reduce the future potential. But if all we do is hoard power until we die, then, like money, we have really wasted our potential.

We can all make a difference, so we all have power. People in influential positions can make a bigger difference, they can impact more lives or leave a wider legacy. But along with opportunity comes constraints. And those with the greatest influence also need to work with more constraints.

Sometimes the constraints are obvious if we care to look and think. Take Barack Obama. He obviously has a lot of power. He can make a big difference. Reportedly, every Tuesday he uses some of his power to decide which foreigners to kill with drones.

We can use this example to understand more about power. Obviously, he has more power because he can create a bigger difference. But there are two challenges. One challenge is the constraints. He has to operate within US law, there are some concerns over international law, and there are other stakeholders who provide check and balance. These constraints are plainly good things in nearly all situations.

The other challenge is the impact of using the power (or not using it) on his future power. How he spends the power changes his future power. Many of the same actors are involved – congress, the Supreme Court, international partners and enemies. But there are also voters, journalists and lobbyists to consider. And, hopefully, the victims too, their families, and all the people his policy might influence.

This is an extreme example, but it applies to nearly all power. At work, I remember my first jobs. I couldn’t do much damage, and my influence was limited. But I did have some influence, and, usually, few constraints stopping me using it. If I followed some obvious rules, I was allowed to get on with things.

As I became more senior, the constraints mounted up. There were more stakeholders to consider, more trade offs to make, and I also had to think more about how much my political capital (power asset) might grow or diminish if I made particular moves.

One lesson is my favourite management philosophy, that of staying out of the way. Most of us would be far better managers if we learned not to get into the way, micromanage, over-supervise and require reporting of our staff. Delegation is part of this, but it is much more, it is a whole attitude to managing. If we can follow the principle, we can liberate ourselves, but also liberate our organization. Usually, they will surprise us in a positive direction. The same philosophy makes capitalism far more effective than communism, for all its faults. If you are a manger and you agree, print a big sheet of paper saying “Get out of the way” and stick it on your wall.

The other lesson is to remember that others have constraints, even though sometimes we can’t easily see them. If someone we respect does something that appears silly, most likely it is because there is a constraint we cannot see. A CEO has constraints, and only a few are easily seen. Understand this, and it will be easier to retain respect and sometimes to act yourself in such a way that you can achieve more.

There are always constraints. Putin has constraints. Xi has constraints. Even the pope has constraints. It is always good to remember this when trying to understand these people and make progress in relations. As soon as Nigel Farage looks like leading a party of power rather than progress, he will see constraints too.

Thinking of power reminded me of a model about needs that was popular in the last quarter of the last century, developed by David McClelland. Moving beyond the needs of Maslow, we develop more sophisticated needs. There is achievement, affiliation, and power, and most of us have one need much higher than the other two. People with high achievement need work well alone, and need goals and calculated risks and feedback. Those with need for affiliation like to belong in a group and be popular, like to collaborate and avoid risks. Those with power need like control, competition, recognition and status.

It is a nice model with clear implications. Achievement motivation is ideal in a subordinate but can be insufficient in a leader, while affiliation motivation can work in teams but rarely in leaders.

Unlike things like Myers Briggs, McClelland claimed that our needs came mainly from culture and environment. That implies that they can change over a lifetime. I wonder what my profile would be now. I remember doing an extensive test that included generating stories from pictures. One picture was of a business meeting, and I focused on a character to the side whom I read as bitter. Perhaps as a result, I was concluded to have high affiliation need, but something they called negative affiliation, for which a wise and rather creepy man offered me some counseling that I never took up. I recall that picture clearly, and I am sure I would write the same type of story again, so perhaps I still need counseling. Who knows?

I found it interesting to recall this model, and it has helped me re-evaluate some public and private characters. It might have helped me as a leader too, in being able to hit the right buttons in colleagues.

I wondered about retirement, and what that did to people of various needs. You could make an argument that retirement threatened all three of the types of need. Perhaps people with one high need are those most at risk from retirement, unless they can find an alternative way to meet that need, and maybe that would be a good way to counsel people about to retire.

Perhaps I’ll try to retake the test, because I really can’t guess which need type is strongest in me nowadays. I know I have some power need. It is why I like to conduct as well as to sing, and why I like to sing solos. Perhaps it is also a subconscious reason why I still blog, even though I claim not to care who reads it. When I was blogging at Shell, perhaps that was when I had greatest power – lots of opportunity, large scope, few constraints. No wonder I derived so much joy from it. It is similar to journalism, or perhaps being a theatre critic – they achieve little, often spurn affiliation, but enjoy power.

Nowadays we all have more opportunity than before, so everyone has more power. Tweets go viral and anyone can influence the whole world. We are also told repeatedly that we are only constrained by our own imaginations, that the American dream is available to all, and that we should aim high.

It is true that power is more widely dispersed. Perhaps total global achievement has increased too in our turbo-charged world, but surely not by as much as the expectations generated by our ambition. A consequence must be a growth in disappointment, as more of us fail to achieve our expectations. After all, what is an expectation but a pre-ordained disappointment?

I read recently that happiness is driven less by things like wealth and more by our sense of relative achievement against others and our own expectations. Whether our primary need is achievement, affiliation or power, it might be argued that humanity overall is doing more to destroy happiness than to create it. Perhaps digging up this old model is one way to turn that around. Though I would need to be power crazy to think that I could influence that!