I highly recommend this book to everybody as it cover both philosophical and practical aspects of a new power world.Our world is changing very fast. So, there are number of practices that I will implement at my work. And it is encouraging to see how Amazon’s policies and tools actually aligned with new power values and values.įor me, as a people manager, is very important to find the way how to give the power to my team, how to give “founder feeling” and how to create mutually beneficial relations between the company and an employee of a hyperconnected age. Is it good or not is another question, but companies have to adopt. And most importantly, they see employer – employee social contract differently – there is no decade long commitment and loyalty. They (or maybe I should say “we” as I belong to the same group of people) are looking for more recognition, more feedback, more participation in decision making process. Younger generations, who grew together with the rise of disruptive Internet-based technologies have different values and expectations from the workplace. The most practical part of the book for me was Chapter 9: Leadership and Chapter 11: New Power at Work. The book introduces another dimension that allows to create the mapping below:

New power is not only about methods, but about values as well. To measure it, the authors introduce “Participation Scale” and it is very much aligned with another book I read earlier this year. A crowd that will not simply consume product/information/content but actively participate in a community and help to develop it. The big part of the book is about building a crowd. It is very interesting to find patterns in behavior of so unlike entities. Create social movement (GetUP in Australia), spread ideas on scale (TED), rally people for the political campaign (Barack Obama) or get funding (BrewDog). The book analyzes multiple organizations, social movements and companies that use new power to achieve various results and solve different challenges. The goal with new power is not to hoard it but to channel it.

Like water or electricity, it’s most forceful when it surges. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. New power operates differently, like a current. It is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven. Once gained, it is jealously guarded, and the powerful have a substantial store of it to spend. Crowdfunding, participation, shared responsibility – this is new power. The modern technologies made possible to create the new strategies built on new principles.

It is clear that power – the ability to produce intended effects – can be obtained via different strategies. New Power was written in 2017, but today it is even more actual than ever.

New power timms