December 21, 2004
power
From a recent e-mail to a client:
…I guess what I’m trying to say is, people won’t buy your product because of its “Merit”.
Your customers don’t want “Merit”. They have that already.
They want “Power”.
They want the power from you that they don’t have themselves.
Power is not about merit.
One thing I notice a lot– when discussing business ideas, people seem very uncomfortable using the word “power”. Especially in the nasty, brutish, Hobbesian sense.
But “power” is THE hard currency of business. The hardest there is. To think otherwise seems almost absurd.
Maybe the people who have it already don’t feel the need to bandy the word around like a trophy.
And the people who don’t have it, maybe they would rather change the subject to something less painful.
[UPDATE:]
Hamish makes a nice point in the comments:
So, if you start talking about power, you’re really laying yourself out to be challenged on exactly how powerful you really are, so people never do it unless they’re pretty sure of their ground. So the subject never gets discussed.
Yeah, like Nelson Algren said, “Reality ain’t pretty.” Heh.
Interesting post Hugh. It caught my attention because my last two days have been plumb full of conversations about power.
You could argue there are three kinds of power: Charismatic, Cooperative, and Cohercive. Most people think only of the last form, maybe what you’re calling Hobbesian. One friend’s advice — Use logic first, power second, and authority last.
Second conversation, while discussing the currency of policy creation and the use of economic models, the guy I’m visiting with says, “Think price and quantity. Price is power. Quantity is policy. Want a better policy? Forget right, forget marketing, forget winning over stakeholders — think power.”
What kind of power are you talking about Hugh? And do you think it’s the best currency?
I’m really talking about the Hobbesian kind.
Sure, we recoil from it in polite society, yet beneath the surface it’s everywhere, even while waiting in line at Starbucks
As an economist, would you not agree?
“Whatever Party of Men obtain the Reins of Management, and have power to name the Person who shall License the Press, that Party of Men have the whole power of keeping the World in Ignorance, in all matters relating to Religion or Policy, since the Writers of that Party shall have full liberty to impose their Notions upon the World.”
– Daniel Defoe — “An Essay on the Regulation of the Press” (1704)
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Did you mean power employed in a Hobbesian (i.e. brutish, nasty) way? Coercive power is, I suppose, the application of power in a Hobbesian way. I asked to which you referred because I was, and remain, unsure of what Hobbesian power meant.
Hobbes believed humankind was principally wicked and untrustworthy. As a result Hobbes proposed absolute authority for a monarchy as the only reasonable offset to protect people from their own evil impulses.
It wasn’t until you fingered economics that I caught your direction. Competition and selfishness were the principle drivers of neo-classical economics (the version we were taught in school). And selfishness is certainly a driver of Hobbesian thought. But I can still be an economist and not completely agree with either Hobbes or neo-classical economic thought.
When one considers human action, it isn
Jeremy, the second guy you visited with must have spent too much time wandering in the poppies. Economically speaking, market power is the domain of monopolists (supply-side) and monopsonists (demand-side), both of whom reduce their own production in order to coerce higher prices and maximize total profit. The power in markets is quantity.
The upshot is if you can
Hmmm… Maybe Hobbes with a bit of Hume thrown in
Hmmm…
Talking about power is a bit like walking into a bar, walking up to a girl and asking for a fuck. She might nor might not be interested, but sure as hell you haven’t given your own chances any good by not allowing context to build up. What do I mean by context? Even if the girl is mad with lust for you, she is unlikely to run out of the door with you because she has not had time to build up a context about “Is this guy a nice guy, or a psycho.” If she thinks your nice, or at least interesting, then she might agree to date, or a phone call or something, but only the really bonkers ones will fuck you, unless you’re in Finland. (I’m happily married, but when I was on a project in Helsinki my single colleagues had some really startling (and enjoyable) experiences with the Finns.)
So, if you start talking about power, you’re really laying yourself out to be challenged on exactly how powerful you really are, so people never do it unless they’re pretty sure of their ground. So the subject never gets discussed.
It’s true in the animal kingdom, too. Watch two strange dogs meeting for the first time. They spent a lot of time and effort in gradually and politely assessing who is dominant. It’s a lot less effort than fighting to establish it, so it’s a good strategy, but it leads to an indirectness of approach. People ain’t no different.
MarkN, you
Neo-classical economics also assumes that people have unlimited wants. That if something is a good, the quantity demanded will be infinite as the price goes to zero.
This isn’t always true, as the good folks over at the Santa Fe institute have shown. I think that power is better modeled using what the Santa Fe Institute is teaching than it is by using what the Neo-Classicists would have us assume.
Maybe your client believes his customers only want a limited amount of power.
They know when they’ve got too much and do what they can to shed it. Maybe they’re perfectly comfortable having the power to choose the colour of their shoes, say, but not with being responsible for the profitability of the technology division of a high street bank, even though that comes with hiring and firing power — because they don’t want the hassle. Many people are sophisticated consumers of power and know their limits.
The only folks who seem to relish accumulating power for its own sake are the Hitler-Kim Il-Sung-Khamenei types.
If you were to propose giving a sophisticated consumer of power an arbitrary amount of power without explaining how it solves a problem that they’ve got, they’ll stop the conversation — hang up the phone, change the channel, turn the page, twist the dial, click on something else.
I’d be uncomfortable discussing power with someone who wanted to sell me something, too. I want to hear a concise solution to my problem. Sometimes, I need a hand constructing a concise statement of my problem first.
MarkN, I just reread your response. If you were answering my question at the end — you were right.
I thought you were responding to the comments of “the second guy” and so wrote a response above.
Blogs … so hard to hear figure who’s really saying what.
Cheers.
“The only folks who seem to relish accumulating power for its own sake are the Hitler-Kim Il-Sung-Khamenei types.”
And Bloggers– we’re all little dictators at heart etc.
Interesting discussion, but I think what clients want is the magic — which may or may not consolidate/establish their power/reputation.