Power Values: The New vs. The Old

Naturally, the new and the old power models are based on completely different values and beliefs that underpin their existence. Let’s try to put them in a very short and summarized way:

  • Governance – the old power models are all about structure and hierarchy, where the governance is formal, strict and institutionalised. New powers are trying to establish networked governance, which is more informal, flash mob driven instead of general assembly governed.
  • DIO – within the old power models, it is all about segments, segregation, division of labour. You need a garage built – build it yourself. You want to have cheap and high-quality fruits and vegetables – grow them yourself. Your phone screen is broken – buy a new one on eBay and change it yourself. No need to pay a professional if you can achieve satisfactory results on your own. This change comes to an extent from the fact that in many cases “specialist” make it worse with their intervention.
  • Transparency – the old power relies on the old saying “The left hand should not know what does the right hand do”. The new power is all about transparency – radical transparency! Instead of separate private and public sectors, we now see them gradually merging in one new whole. Instead of confidentiality and discretion, everything is exposed, commented and discussed.
  • Affiliation – this is another drastically changed aspect of the power models – once it used to be long-term and related to required loyalty, now it is short-term, conditional and including more participation.           

The Players

powerHeimans and Timms make it visible that nothing is black and white. So far we contrasted the old and the new power models and discussed what they are based on and what their values are. Many companies out there, however, are somewhere in the middle – they are old power models with new power values or new power models with old power values. The great diagram in the original article makes it very clear to understand – it is divided into four quadrants named Connectors, Crowds, Castles and Cheerleaders.

The Connectors are new power models like Facebook – they claim they are community driven and include shaping, sharing and producing, but they don’t really take into consideration what people actually want – they do whatever is good for them. Opposite them are the Cheerleaders – they are old power models, but that is not necessary willingly and some of them are trying hard to switch sides by embracing the new power values. And then there are the two radical groups: the Castles are the old traditional power models with old power values, they stand their ground firmly and vigorously oppose the new power values, even though they use them sometimes for their own purposes; the Crowds are the true expression of the new power models embracing the new power values – they are often seen as ‘the good guys’ of our time (Google, Wikipedia, BitCoin, Occupy etc.)

In the final part of this series we will look at how to cultivate power.  See you in the next post.