Re: [SAGE] Help! Multiple platforms in a Dell Shop

[David Blank-Edelman <dnb@ccs.neu.edu>]

On Jan 13, 2006, at 6:05 AM, Brad Knowles wrote:

> You may be in a position of great power wherever you work, but  
> 99.99% of the rest of the community is not.  Like it or not, anyone  
> working in this business will tend to have a lot more  
> responsibility to make sure that certain things happen certain  
> ways, but a lot less authority to actually do it -- especially when  
> it comes to interfacing with management or other powerful users.

Ok, so here's my mostly "disagree" (to quote Jennifer) response:

Power, authority, and influence are three very different things. In  
the example of your wife (who I think we all deserve to meet at some  
point, since she's come up before), I'd assert she doesn't have the  
authority to make the CEO stop smoking, but with careful and clever  
manipulation she'd be able to get him to stop smoking around her.

I'm almost loathe to point people at this, because it is a really  
evil book in the wrong hands (perhaps even in the right hands), but  
_The 48 Laws of Power_ by Robert Greene is a book full of information  
on how one can gain or wield power even without having authority.  
There are a whole set of other books with info like this, just see  
Amazon's recommendations when you look the book up.

Now, just so I'm clear about this: I bring this citation up in this  
context because I trust the people in our community to act in a moral  
and ethical fashion. The information in these books make it extremely  
easy to act in unethical or immoral ways. If you do decide to read  
them, please be careful.

There are other clearly more moral/ethical ways to create change in  
situations where you are apparently powerless. See {insert social  
justice or labor rights movement here} for inspiration.

Short summary: I'd like to believe we are very rarely powerless, even  
when it appears that way on the surface. Sure, it may take different  
or more clever techniques to wield this power, but those things are  
not beyond our reach.

             -- dNb