NEW POWER

There’s a lot to unpack from New Power: How Movements Build, Businesses Thrive, and Ideas Catch Fire in Our Hyperconnected World, a book from Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms on the way that today’s technologies are upending established norms of social interaction.

Admittedly, there are any number of books available these days that go into detail about the disruptive potential of the Internet, social media, and mobile computing in general. New Power is such a book that stands out in the way that it characterizes how old models for getting this done and the values they represent intersect with new ones that technology makes possible—for good or ill.

As the title suggests, the book necessarily begins by articulating what Heimans and Timms mean by “New Power” and how this contrasts with “Old Power,” which they explain as follows:

”Old power works like a currency. It is held by a few. Once gained, it is jealously guarded, and the powerful have a substantial store of it to spend. It is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven. It downloads, and it captures. New power operates differently, like a current. It is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. It uploads, it distributes. Like water or electricity, it’s most forceful when it surges. The goal with new power is not to hoard it but to channel it.”

As described, it is the prevalence of today’s communications technologies—mobile phones and the way they democratize access to the Internet and social media and thus allow us to lead interconnected lives—that gives rise to this New Power paradigm. More interestingly, Heimans and Timms point out that in practice, seldom do individuals or groups possess or exercise such influence in a vaccuum; rather it is more often the case that characteristics of New Power cross-fertilize with those of Old, often with surprising results. Hence, it becomes incumbent upon leaders and communicators to navigate the different ways by which Old and New models of power cross paths with the Old and New values by which such power is wielded in the pursuit of specific goals.

In this regard, New Power offers a surfeit of examples to drive home the point. Indeed, there is at least one analysis that appears prescient: Heimans and Timms deconstruct how Barack Obama and Donald Trump employed contrasting New Power strategies to win their respective runs for office, explaining how the social media campaigns of the latter candidate helped propel him to such an unexpected victory (as is becoming clearer and clearer today).

There’s a lot to be learned in New Power, about how to lead change and communicate effectively, and there’s no doubt that its authors offer a number of useful insights in that regard. One gem in particular is their observation that “[p]eople talk a lot about movements these days, but it’s only really a movement if it moves without you.” This is really what New Power is all about: the ability to light a flame in others by letting them feel as if they lit it themselves, thereby keeping that flame ablaze.

“When we think about how ideas spread in the twenty-first century,” Heimans and Timms write, “[it is] clear that they spread sideways.” This is an important point: in order for something to catch on, what’s important is the ability to get those around you to buy in and participate. Unfortunately, while this is the crux of New Power, it says nothing about the ends towards which such “power” is put to use. The authors of New Power also recognize that the exercise of New Power has a normative dimension, too:

“As we choose whether or not to participate, we have an obligation to consider more than whether new power communities delight or make things easier for us, but also whether they are helping or harming the world around us.”