Category: Power

  • STOP strategies to overcome the powerful

    Mark Van Vugt lists a number of STOP strategies to overcome the powerful: Gossip and ridicule Public meetings Replacing leaders Disobedience or rebellion Desertion Assassination Reference: Mark Van Vugt, Why Some People Lead, Why Others Follow and Why it Matters, p. 19.

  • Don’t empower me – release me

    “Don’t empower me. Release me. I’ll find my own power, and it will be far greater than anything you can bestow on me.” Tweet by Tobias Mayer 2013-02-28 Tobias Mayer has a blog about Business Craftsmanship which is well worth a visit. Tobias has a human-centric perspective in his guidance of organizations towards new ways…

  • Three faces of power

    I am convinced that we need to change existing power structures in order to achieve organizational democracy. An example are the struggles we see with scaling agile software development to the whole organization. This is ultimately a question of changing the power distribution. Kenneth E. Boulding defines the three faces of power as: Threat Power…

  • Domination Structures

    I have recently read Speak Peace in a World of Conflict: What You Say Next Will Change Your World by Marshall Rosenberg. Marschall defines a domination system as a system in which a few people control many people to their own advantage. In domination systems people are trained to think in ways that support the…

  • Let’s take self-organization seriously

    We are in the middle of December and the days are short up here in the northern part of Europe, but it’s not only a dark time of the year. I have recently encountered musings about the darkness in the world in the books I have read. Margaret Wheatley writes for example in her new…

  • Power to act

    ”… the power to act lie within the person – rather than in an expert dealing with him or her, or in a system controlling him or her.” – Carl Rogers, On Personal Power, page 151