The Shifting Dynamics of Power
Issue LXXI | The Shifting Dynamic of Power
Good morning!
As they infamously sang in Hamilton, "Look around, look around, how lucky we are to be alive right now!"
While a general antagonist to rampant optimism, I DO believe we've lost our ability to notice the opportunities surrounding us. The old tools - office politics, traditional growth models, ladder climbers who stayed in organizations for decades - are now firmly in the rearview.
How we saw the opportunities to advance (ourselves, our careers, our organizations) are all tainted by the lens of a bygone era.
We have to see differently now. We have to study new ways of gaining perspective. So in that spirit, I send this little Monday morning missive every week. But in particular, this week, as we look for new ways of looking, leading, and the shifting dynamics of power.
The last great breath of FAANGs
Don't get me wrong, the oligarchical leadership of Facebook, Amazon, Google, and the rest will be with us for some time. But there was a moment when their belief in their manifest destiny and blind optimism about the economy hit the heights.
You may remember it. "The Contest for HQ2." (brought to you by Amazon.)
So convinced that any city in the world would clamor for its mere presence, Amazon set up a Contest of Champions wherein the winner (as deemed by subsidies, backchannel deals, and big airports) would receive the beneficence of their second HQ. Amazon leaders when on PR junkets to claim the objectivity of the search. Doing such holy work as going on CNBC to talk about how important the CNBC rankings were in their decision.
They chose Washington, DC (technically Arlington, VA, because DC doesn't have state taxes to subsidize) right before the pandemic broke out.
Last week, they quietly announced that the plans for HQ2 had been postponed indefinitely. The decisions at this scale of growth are, no doubt, complex. And yet it's not hard to see the shift in power dynamics.
Just four years ago, the once demigod Amazon had even the world's most powerful city of commerce, NYC, begging at its feet. Today, the company is licking its wounds after several PR blunders surrounding the laying off of 18,000 people. (More than the entire working population of HQ2.)
Amazon's heights were a validation that bigger is better. But is it? That, of course, leads me to a question:
What did the pandemic really change?
Nearly every organization should take a one-day offsite to answer this question for themselves this year. The last four years have dramatically shifted many things in how business is done. But most significantly, it has turned the one thing that almost no one wants to directly talk about: Power.
For example:
- The power between employers and employees has shifted in a way not seen since the labor movements of the last century.
- The power between established players and upstarts shifting firmly to the second.
- The creator class has upended the power between the credentialed and the self-made in industries like marketing.
- The power between Silicon Valley and, well, everyone as we all awake to the dystopia they've created.
I'm not suggesting that any of these or their conglomerate means you need to change your business model tomorrow. I am saying that businesses that don't meditate on power and its dynamics are doomed to be knocked about by it.
This leads me to an unexpected Screen pick...
The beginning of a beautiful friendship
Wendy, my wife, and I jetted over to the multiplex this weekend to view Casablanca on the big screen. I love Casablanca, the witty repartee, and Dooley Wilson's incomparable voice.
When it's doing its job, Hollywood thrives in telling stories amidst upheaval. Casablanca takes place in a secluded location but immortalizes the shift in power between the Nazis taking Paris and the entrance of the Americans into World War II.
The film ends with a friendship between an American freedom fighter who has stayed too long on the sidelines and a Frenchman who has been too willing to dally with the devil. The iconic pair of Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains is the true romance of the film.
Power shifts are marked by old alliances made new and new ones emerging.
The room where it happens... happened?
While we are on the subject of revolutions, and since the worldwide smash musical Hamilton has already entered the chat, it only makes sense that our sound of the week comes from that familiar place.
One of the reasons people are concerned about the disruption of office culture is because they know full well the power of being in "the room where it happened." If those rooms no longer exist or require a Zoom to be prescheduled to happen, what are we to do with the doling out of power.
As you ponder that question, hit the Spotify link to hear Hamilton's incomparable Leslie Odom Jr. sing "The Room Where it Happens" from Hamilton.
A book misnomered and thus overlooked.
I hate to overstate... but —
This book has done the best job explaining the seismic shifts in economic power over the last four years.
The irony? It was written before the Pandemic. But, in truth, the disruption of these recent years finalized a shift that has been coming for the last decade.
The author names this shift The Passion Economy, a play too hard into the creator class elements. However, what we now know is the rise of niche businesses is not just for creators; it is a dramatic redefinition of how categories are made—and broken.
Leading from any chair.
If you've made it this far, I leave you with a brief quote from someone who's been learning a lot about shifts in power. We took 14 marketing leaders (department heads, key contributors, and heads of business development) through our Lead Up workshop, which finished last week.
I'd be remiss not to leave you with a quote from one of our participants:
"I was impressed by material, the depth of insight all around, and the un-boringness (and therefore inherent usefulness) of everything Nick & Katie shared. What a mindset shift."
May you find your own mindset shifts. Forward, forward,