General about power

Power has two sides:

• Productivity, growth, quantity
• Competition
• Power is by definition always hidden in the dark. You never open your hart to anyone but the one you trust

Who is assigned power

The person who is best at playing power games which includes:

• Negotiating
• Forming alliances
• Motivating people
• Presenting descriptions of reality according to thier own perspective

How does the handling of power relate to other competences

• How to handle power is the dominating competence
• Without social competence it is difficult to handle power
• Without communication competence it is difficult to handle power

The only way to learn to handle power is to take part in the game

• Specific theoretical knowledge can be learned by only reading
• Complex co-ordination of knowledge is best learned by experiencing
• You cannot learn to walk without trying to walk
• You cannot learn to sing without singing

Power structures versus flexibility in organisations

• There must be a balance of power in a growing organisation
• If there is not a balance the organisation becomes rigid
• People and groups without power cannotafford to take risks and therefore they become less flexible

Power structures seen from a dialectic perspective

• To much control creates passive resistance among the controlled
  • Controlling belief structures of members gives complete control
  • Top-Down (military) is most efficient in a short time perspective and least efficient in the long time perspective
  • Strong ideologies have to create "evil" enemies
• To little control creates suboptimisation
  • People and divisions start to act in a way that is good for themselves but bad for the organisation
  • When an organisation does not work it develops short-cuts to get things done
  • Corruption comes before anarchy
  • Corruption is increasingly growing in industrial nations
  • Lack of order is usually replaced by an authoritarian rule

The value of competition can only be exploited if the competitors can be compared

• Benchmarking to communicate tacit knowledge
• In a free market the customers compare the products
• In an organisation the management compares departments and employees
• You cannot compare parts if there is no standards for describing the parts
• Standards are only created if there is a need for coordinating communication
• Standards must be implemented from the top of the organisation

Redundance as a requirement for benchmarking

• Without redundance no benchmarking
• The biological world contains an abundance of redundance
• Several projects working on the same tasks can create a culture ofpositive competetiion
• Several employees do the same thing but with different strategies may create comparison knowledge
•  Benchmarking differences between strategies creates an organisational learning
• To see what works good and what works bad among different strategies creates an organisational learning

The manager problems

• Managers care about their own needs before the needs of the organisation.
• Managers must be compensated for taking a risk
• The divorce law protects individuals just as bonus-payments protects management
• The consultant Jay Hall's testament

Solution to problems with "greedy" managers

• Groups of managers. Manager teams
• Balanced bonus systems
• Managers as shareholders
• A circulation of leaders (example: the environment party in Sweden)
• Corruption increases in all industrialised societies
• Openness as the antidote to corruption