Decision Making Power is so crucial to individual and collective success that it's often conflated with power itself.

Not to mention how frequently exclusion from Decision Making Power is used as a method of control.

That's why countless groups have developed and champion methodologies to create faster, more equitable methods for making decisions to fuel collective coordination (*think Agile methodology, teal organizations, holocracy, sociocracy, integrative decision making, blockchain, DAOs etc).

Because we can only move as quickly and as well as we make timely, potent decisions. 

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All of the metrics by which we measure success (by any set of values) relies on our decisions.

Just ask any product engineer and or anyone who designs automated workflows and they know this fact at a cellular level.

One bug in thousands of lines of code can topple a whole product.

It turns out the same is true in our own internal process.

The average adult makes between 33,000 to 35,000 decisions per day.

(*The vast majority of these are unconscious)

 

Our decisions reflect our conduct — literally how we conduct power — and they determine the caliber of our leadership.

(*Remember, power is the capacity to move energy through systems)

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The quality of our decisions hinges on whether we are operating from our Power that Serves the Whole (PSW) or from our Shadow Power (SP).

Yet, most people struggle to distinguish between the two.

(cue: the sound of red flags waving in the wind)

 

 
Translation: Without power literacy, you are likely making 1,000s of decisions every day that cause harm to yourself and others.

Also, when you make a decision from SP or PSW, you're more likely to make your next decision from that same state.

Now multiply this impact by the number of people on your team.

This, my friend, is the drag in the system that we assume as a necessary part of collaboration and a status quo part of doing work.

However it need not be that way.

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With power literacy, we learn to discern how our own power patterns impact the potency of our decision making and our trustworthiness.

If you've take the Power Assessment, this image is probably familiar (*it's part of your assessment results readout).

It shows the 5 possible interaction patterns between our PSW & SP for each of the 36 types of power at work.

 NEWSFLASH: It's not as simple as being good and bad people.

👉🏽 This is why the "No assholes" rule never works as an approach to culture.

THE BIG A-HA here is that the complex interactions between our Power that Serves the Whole & Shadow Power impact our ability to make decisions for the benefit of all and our ability to trust ourselves and be trusted by others.

And until we become conscious of them — we can't effectively choose a different path.

This is why new structures or processes will never get us there on their own.

We each need to master the forces within us that drive our decisions.

 

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If you have feelings about this or want to nerd out about it, feel free to reply.

If you feel motivated to see how you're getting in your own way — and how to pivot, take your Power Assessment today.

If you're ready to get out of the eddies you know have been holding you back asap, join me in the final Regenerative Power Embodiment Accelerator of 2024.
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