Mastering The Power Zone Mastering The Power Zone The .

Autumn 2007Mastering the power zoneThe Ashridge JournalClaudia Heimer is a Business Director of AshridgeConsulting. Her focus is on helping international organisationsengage people inside and outside more fully as part of theirstrategic changes. Her experiences as coach and consultantcontribute to her research agenda on power and emotionsin the context of organisational change.Email: claudia.heimer@ashridge.org.ukMastering the power zoneWhether managers choose to recognise and work with power or not, it stilldetermines outcomes in organisations. In this article Claudia Heimer describesthe “push and pull” of power games observed in her recent research and offersa mapping device that enables managers to recognise and work with thepower dynamics that are at play in change processes.Perspectives on powerHow does the word “power” make you feel?Does it make you angry? Does it make youhappy? Over the years, I have come acrossmanagers, particularly in emerging markets,who associate power with repressivegovernment and therefore choose to leadthrough a highly participative yet disciplinedapproach. They choose to focus entirelyon perfecting their leadership style andare not interested in power at all. Othersare filled with enthusiasm and talk abouttheir role models of powerful people whocombine strong value sets and missionswith extraordinary results.What is power? We all have our own viewson what it means. With the pace andcomplexity of change we experience today,more managers want to know how tomaster the power zone. Do you want trueengagement? Do you want people reallycommitted to the strategy of the company?Do you want your agenda to stand a fairchance? It’s increasingly vital that youunderstand the interplay of political forcesto increase your chances for success.The subject of power has preoccupiedmany writers and academics over the last20 years and they have come up withsome great questions and approaches thathave helped map out the field of power.For example, “What are the sources ofwww.ashridge.org.uk/3601

The Ashridge JournalMastering the power zoneAutumn 2007power?” One of the most influential waysof looking at this question has groupedbases of power along factors coming fromone’s position in an organisation and otherscoming from personal factors1. Positionpower sources can allow managers to forceothers into compliance, or shape decisionsbecause others attribute power to the rolethe person occupies. The personal powersources are either about exchangingknowledge or skills for what others want, orabout having attributes such as charisma orfame. The limitation of much managementliterature and most approaches to powerlies in their focus on the individual. They talkabout power in terms of helping individualsto “get their way”, reducing it mainly topersonal attributes or technique.From observations in organisations I haveworked with, I was becoming increasinglyaware that power is something that happensin relationships. If you take something,somebody else is letting you do this. Ifmy observations were to be accurate, wecan never really understand and masterthe subject if we simply study the traitsof the powerful and try to replicate theirsuccesses. This drove me on to researchthe subject: research that increasingly ledme to see power as something that movesaround constellations of people that formand re-form continuously, particularly inchange processes. My research findingshave enabled me to help leaders think in asystematic way about influencing varioustypes of political situations and adopt somesimple approaches to becoming better atthe power game.Looking beyond the heroInfluenced by ideas from sociology2, myresearch looked beyond the individualinto the groups and the dynamics theyproduce during change. What happenswhen things start getting in flux? Whathappens when the “powerful” and the“powerless” interact? How do groupsform and re-form in change? How are theoutcomes of change processes shaped?2www.ashridge.org.uk/360Scope of the researchMy research, throughout 2006,focused on a variety of cases in theprivate and the public sector. It involvedsix companies in the IT, financialservices, building materials andtelecommunications industries; twoadditional case studies were an NGOand a public sector organisation. Threeof the companies were large globalplayers; the others were medium sizedorganisations in the UK, Germany,Switzerland and South Africa.Some organisations were rather morehierarchically managed, with controlvested very clearly with the leaders,while others were run democraticallyby involving employees in businessdecisions. In some of the case studies,change was introduced as a top down,radical approach. In others, it was moreevolutionary. In the organisations thattook part, I conducted 360 interviewswith executives, their bosses ortrustees, as well as their direct reportsor peers (totalling up to 12 interviewsfor each case).Across all continents and acrossorganisations with widely differing valuesystems, my findings were strikingly similar.I found the same pattern in all the placesI looked. There is a surprisingly simplemovement in the power dynamics I sawrepeated in the case studies, involvingcompeting and collaborating forces.People invariably formed groups, andinvariably there were people who wereperceived as “powerful” and people whowere perceived as “powerless”. No matterfrom where change was initiated, othersfirst reacted with scepticism about theother group’s intentions, ways of thinking,and approaches. How much of what isbeing proposed is going to go againstour interests? The dynamics, as variousinterests interacted, resulted in a movement

Autumn 2007of push and pull, with giving and taking onall sides. One group transformed somethings in the other peoples’ thinking and theother way around, often without each sidebecoming aware of it!I found that it was difficult for people toanswer the question of what they had tolet go of in the process of change. It wasthe very process of reflection after the eventthat allowed some of the leaders to realisethat others had managed to get their way,at least partially, so focused were they onthe desired end state.The outcome of change was invariably thecombination of what the “powerful” andthe “powerless” wanted. In the study, eventhe most “top down” project didn’t getimplemented exactly the way the leaderswanted. The push backs always led tomodifications. They might not have changedthe overall course of action but at the veryleast, other people’s reactions delayed theimplementation of change.While some of the change processesinvolved leaders apparently single-handedlydriving change processes top down, thereality was different. Based on the findings,my suggestion is to try and understand howthe pattern operates and stop fighting it bytrying harder into the direction we want.We need to go with the dynamic powerprocess so that we increase our impact.Creating employee ownershipAxiz, a South African SME in the ITinfrastructure distribution business,and the only hardware manufacturerin Africa, was founded in 1989. In 17years, it grew to reach a turnover ofZAR 2.2billion and 650 employeesby the end of 2006. This company isthe continent’s response to RicardoSemler’sfamouslyself-managedcompany SEMCO in Brazil3.However, the journey has not beeneasy and management has observedMastering the power zoneThe Ashridge Journalmuch “push and pull” as they learnedthat power is something that must beaccepted and not simply gifted. Whenmanagement tried to make employeeownership a company-wide approachin 2003, it was surprised to hit anegative reaction. It first had to learnnot to assume that everyone wouldnaturally take to the idea of being anowner, or even take the idea seriously.It had to learn to talk as much aboutthe rewards as the risks of ownershipand stop trying to convince people.Everyone had to become educated oninvestments, inflation risks and returnincluding capital gain and dividends inorder to understand what trulyembracing ownership would mean.A lot of the push and pull stopped whenthe first dividends were paid out. Manypeople completely changed their view.This was real. Management wasn’ttricking them into believing somethingthat wasn’t really that great for them.This was the point at which manyemployees started buying more sharesin the company and really investing intheir future.When introducing an acceleratedshare buying scheme to iron outthe inequalities that still existed inrelation to the black/white and male/female distribution of wealth in 2006,management again found the reactionsto be mixed. Why should women andblack people be favoured? Imaginehow the executives felt who werejust trying to give their employees alarge gift! Today, everyone joins as anowner. The company employs 60%of the country’s black people activein the IT sector, with managementholding 74% of the company and theemployees 26%. The result is a 25%year on year growth, while the industryaverage stayed at around 5-10 %, andcompetitors grew by only 8-9%.www.ashridge.org.uk/3603

The Ashridge JournalMastering the power zoneAutumn 2007Stepping into powerIf change processes allow everyone tohave some degree of impact, how canwe shape the outcomes of a politicalprocess? If one accepts from the outsetthat change invariably leads to both pushand pull, give and take, the focus can shiftaway from fighting for separate agendas.Without wasting energy on attempting todrive change agendas through, the focuscan be on discovering a new picture of thefuture that emerges, influenced by both the“powerful” and the “powerless”.Can you stay out of it? In the research,some managers were very comfortablewith letting the political process unfold, andtaking every situation as it emerges. Lackof foresight and thinking about politicalprocesses were leaving them open to beingmanipulated, excluded or used by others.Whatever you do, you can’t really stayout of the power zone. There is always apolitical game going on. And you are alwayspart of it. It is your choice if you are activeor reactive in it. It’s up to you to decide toshape it.This is not about creating highly manipulativetactics for tricking other people intosituations they don’t want to be in.This is not about being clever. This is aboutbeing able to read patterns of interactionbetween people; being clear about whatmatters to you and what you are unwilling tolet go of; realising that you have a lot moreinfluence than you might actually feel youhave. This is about stepping up into the fieldof forces around you and actively shapingthe dynamics and the results.Wendy Luhabe, perhaps South Africa’smost prominent female business andsocial entrepreneur once said: “Power isnot something you are given. Power issomething you step into.”Based on the research findings, I havedeveloped a mapping tool to help you thinkabout how to influence things by design(see Figure 1).There will always be a degree to which theoutcome of any politically charged changewill be unknowable. Yet if you look aheadyou will have more chances of reachingthe outcome you desire than if you leavethings to the political process. This is notabout planning.Figure 1. The Power Map4www.ashridge.org.uk/360As you prepare to use the mappingtool, the challenge is to stop thinkingabout yourself as a lone hero while youconsider the specific change situationyou have initiated or you are facedwith. You live and work in groups andsomebody helped you get to whereyou are now. Who is helping youstay where you are and support you?The tendency of most stakeholdermapping tools is to treat stakeholdersas individual players. Invariably, whatyou are actually faced with are groupsof people who are interlocked in apolitical process of push and pull thatmight have many more dimensions ofpush and pull than the one (or the ones)you are looking at.