The Myth of Power

Russell Ackoff makes a distinction between power over and power to. If you have power over someone, you have power to limit their behavior. "You have to be home by midnight." "You are not authorized to make purchases of more than $500." By contrast, power to enables. If you give someone the power to, say, repair refrigerators or set broken bones, you have given them power to.

“Power to” is elusive and difficult. Also, it often doesn't even look like what is traditionally thought of as power, so reliant is it on the education and empowerment of the subject. By contrast, power over looks like the cliché that animates the actions of so many; it clearly has a powerful person and one subject to that power.

If you are in a leadership position, take a different kind of inventory. Assess to what extent your people have new capabilities, have new sets of "power to," in the last 12 months. It is this increase in power, this increase in ability to create value that ultimately defines progress. Don't succumb to the allure of the myth of power taken out of children's literature about kings and queens.