A guide to gaining strength

Here comes the role of faith in strength. Only those who believe in principle that they can exercise power are able to recognize the resources available to them to do so.

“how dare you?” as an instrument of power

In the case of a police officer or supervisor, the resource is obvious: it lies in the right to carry out orders by force if necessary (in the case of an officer), or in the ability to give or decline praise and promotions – or even to fire a person and give him this deprivation of material security ( on the president).

But by no means all energy resources are so obvious. The authors go into detail on the example of the “Fridays for Future” climate protection movement, which has made a significant contribution in recent years to the fact that climate protection plans in industrialized nations have become more ambitious.

At first glance, the activists of this movement, especially the Swedish Greta Thunberg, have no means of power. As underage students, most of them are not even allowed to vote.

However, the authors analyze that teens actually had a very effective tool of power at their disposal: the possibility of withdrawing appreciation from their parents’ generation. Describing oneself by one’s offspring as selfish, oblivious to the future and destroying one’s life chances for one’s own convenience severely violates the need for self-respect.

This means of power is expressed in Thunberg’s famous statement “How dare you?” , addressed to the parent’s generation, as well as in the term “flying shame”, coined only in the context of Fridays for Future.

Other social movements have not been as successful. For example, the monetary capitalist movement “Occupy Wall Street” was very popular after the global financial crisis, but now it has almost disappeared without really changing capitalism.

The three most important characteristics of social movements

The book argues that among the young climate stewards, three important factors necessary to give the social movement real influence were combined: First, activism – in the form of the hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren around the world who demonstrated on Fridays for climate protection (although the The fact that one could usually miss school for this without penalties may have contributed to the activation).

Second, innovation – unlike Occupy Wall Street, Friday for Future has made concrete and coherent proposals for how to implement more climate protection both technically and politically.

Thirdly, coordination – young climatologists were able to communicate with other social groups, including parties and large corporations, and consciously sought dialogue with them. The fact that German climate activist Luisa Neubauer met then-Siemens President Joe Kaiser in 2020 is an example of this coordination.

The book is filled with examples of how supposedly powerless social groups have acquired and implemented changes for the better. Once the reader understands the principle, he becomes a little tired.

As if the authors had to prove over and over that they definitely didn’t want to make a remake of the classic The Prince. In this literary book for rulers from the sixteenth century, Niccol Machiavelli gives advice on maintaining political power, some of which is still in force today—even if no intelligent politician would admit it.

However, Battilana and Casciaro also maintain a refreshingly unmoved view of power and invite their readers: “Before you can build your own power base, you need to know who is in power and why.”

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In the workplace or in politics, it is important above all to recognize who is receptive to which resources, and who craves praise, titles, money, and independence. The real key to exercising power is to lure everyone with irresistible resources – in modern companies this is called “stimulus”.

But even those who have no interest in increasing their own power will benefit from reading Power to All. Because the book also analyzes how to free yourself from your supposed weakness. For example, by reducing your desire for resources used to exercise power.

For example, an employee can learn to let go of the manipulative manager’s praise—and thus break some of the power the manager has over him. Which brings us back to the opening example with the fan, where the power begins to overcome the feeling of powerlessness.

This power of consciousness has a downside: Using numerous examples and psychological experiments, the authors have shown that capacity awareness is easily tempted to misuse it—the stronger it is, the longer and more deprived one exercises this power. “When powerful people act, they consider their actions legitimate, even if they are immoral or illegal. They convince themselves that they have earned their position – even if the reality is different.”

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