Power Relationships Shape Success

Understanding organizations is about understanding people -- and all the complexities and context that go along with their individual survival and group dependencies. A recent Harvard Business Review blog posting walks through the value of wise leaders and those who cultivate such knowledge, it further points to the absolute necessity of understanding the power relationships among the people and the ideals that drive an organization's behaviors and actions. Those power relationships are critical and something that people often fail to examine with a true eye toward learning and growth. They tend rather to view them from the surface in order to assess how they might manipulate or use them to advantage. Give away those tendencies, dive deeper into the organization toward the interdependencies of the various levels and the dynamics of how the broader good (through the individual contributor) might be advanced. You might discover ways to grow and succeed unlike any you've known before. Seek to understand how best to grow the people and you might become more insightful about how to grow the organization.