Power, Innovation & Influencing Human Behavior
By Tomi Michel
“Throughout time and in all countries, the people who have the wealth are the people who own the means of wealth production. To maintain or increase their wealth, they work with the people who havEthical e political power, who are in a symbiotic relationship with them, to set and enforce the rules.” —Ray Dalio, The Changing World Order
An individual cannot preside over a stance of weakness. Both managing things and leading people require the ability to wield energy and force. Firms in society’s public, private, and non-profit sectors require competitive leaders to exist and prevail in the marketplace, where the options are plentiful.
My experience working in a Massachusetts municipality taught me that consistently implementing innovative solutions within city government leads to positive results and fosters change in human behavior. On the other hand, the lack of creativity and failure to keep up with technological advances in the world, with its core competency requirements, fluctuations in the economy, and the pressing needs of the population, are averse to our society’s integrity, development, and progress.
Therefore, a leader must feel comfortable with a continuous change mindset, readapting their modus operandi when necessary. As Charles Darwin suggested in his theory of evolution to ensure survival, it is not the fastest nor the strongest who survive but the ones able to adapt to changes. Power can be defined as the capacity to influence and control the thoughts, behaviors, and actions of people, events, and outcomes.
Power has long been misconstrued. It should not be confused with leadership—the ability to guide a group toward a common goal—nor with manipulation, which is the ability to influence a group toward a goal through deceptive means, prioritizing personal interests over the group’s well-being. I have concluded that there are seven types of power at an individual level.
The power that comes from knowledge and access to information is intellectual. The power that arises from possessing wealth and financial assets is economic power. The power derived from access to a vast human network, along with its tools, resources, and insights, is social power. The power that comes from consensus and the support of a majority of a group or collective is political power (not limited to the public sector). The power that evolves from experience and wisdom is experimental power. Military power is rooted in the ability to exert physical force, policing, violence, and wage war. The seventh type is spiritual power, which comes from inner strength, conviction, a healthy psyche, and a sense of connection to a divine or higher being. Consequently, power can be used with both the intent to edify and the intent to harm. The line that divides its constructive from destructive uses is found in ethics literature, a subdomain of philosophy.
For instance, institutional power can be harnessed to influence individual action. “Government education campaigns can help to positively influence behavior. If the government wants citizens to have a healthy lifestyle, which leads to fewer hospital and doctor visits and a better quality of life, it can educate people through a campaign and put incentives in place to encourage healthy choices.
“Additionally, the government can impose penalties for those who don’t want to comply. An example was when Massachusetts cities and towns banned smoking in bars and restaurants. There was a communications campaign around the dangers of smoking, and equally as important, it highlighted the dangers of non-smokers inhaling secondhand smoke. The message was that while anyone of legal age had the right to smoke, they did not have the right to impact others in public places. Innovative ideas by the government can model good behavior by citizens, as long as the people trust the public leaders and have confidence in the good initiatives for them.” Comments Paul Tucker, the Essex County District Attorney, oversees prosecuting criminal cases in said jurisdiction.
Many factors affect one’s well-being, both directly and indirectly. The gas price, the ubiquitous securities market with its sudden shifts in publicly traded companies’ stocks, and the influence presidential campaign seasons have on the population’s moods are just a few. Hence, creating and maintaining positive relationships with others, whether professional, friendships, or romantic, requires attentiveness in judging and managing bits of information that are not so straightforward or overt to the eye.
We must understand our human nature with pragmatism and realize that we are far more visceral than we thought and less rational than we portray ourselves to be. Contextualizing it with living in a market economy, in a globalized world where information travels at the speed of light and geographical barriers have been minimized. Thus, there is power in understanding our reality rather than living in a mirage, where many can see who we pretend to be and few who we are, as Niccolò Machiavelli says in “The Prince.”
Considering that truth precedes justice, a Boston reverend who provided insights on power and ongoing innovation but requested anonymity stated: “From my perspective on leading a ministry with the unhoused and not so much as an innovator. Dismantling traditional systems that keep people oppressed and dispossessed is essential for our collective well-being and for the restoration of all humanity. I believe in the theory of Ubuntu, “I am because we are.” It describes the necessity of our interconnectedness. Any time we engage in disrupting or dismantling traditional oppressive systems, I think we risk everything.
For some, the risks involved are ego, reputation, security, and sometimes even life itself. Those things can be considered a “downside” of disrupting or dismantling traditional systems or industries, but they could also be considered our moral duty. It depends on one’s perspective. As Maya Angelou said, “Courage is the most important of all the virtues because, without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”
We can conclude we find ourselves in a peculiar spot in history. A point in time where adversarial values reign openly, with two major wars taking place, the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The current situation is survival of the fittest. Our social contracts to maintain order and justice have been breached. You are doomed if you do not have the dexterity or knowledge to advocate for yourself or uphold your best interest to prevail in a dispute when it arises.
Finding people with the values and ideals guiding us towards camaraderie and fairness has become more challenging. We seem to believe that we will be able to live individually in peace while the lives of those who surround us are in chaos. Maybe we should start abiding by the power of love—the one that, according to my grandmother, Teolinda Feliz, has helped her promote transitivity in the interpersonal relationships of a family that is geographically dispersed between Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Massachusetts, USA. We live in a day and age where people want to cultivate power, not for the betterment of humanity, wishing to keep it at all costs.
Tomi Michel is a Rumbo Columnist. He can be reached at tomas@michelpublicrelations.com.
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