Power and influence, the elixir that society has craved for throughout the ages. Looking at human history one can draw a straight line through it by following the people or entities who have wielded power and influence. They were the history makers; they were the ones that shaped society and defined the underlying narrative on which modern society is based today. All the way from Zeus, Ra, Moses, Caesar, Jesus, Napoleon through to Gandhi, Hitler, JFK and Mother Terresa. We stand in awe of them as they reach into our hearts and minds. Some inspire greatness, others fear and yet others leave us speechless – especially, every time Donald Trump1 tells the world about his “excellent letter” he wrote to Kim Jong-Un (NCAN, 2019). These individuals and entities stand as sentinels in the hallowed halls of history, reminding us that this secret elixir called power and influence is the true key to achieving great things.
But things are changing at a rapid pace because, with the advent of big data and Machiavellian amounts of processing power arose a new fandangle kid - Artificial Intelligence. We are staring into the very likely possibility that decision making will eventually be solely done by AI agents (Sincavage, 2017). The burning question that arises is - how will people’s power and influence and their ability to make strategic decisions be affected by the advent of AI? Will we embrace it? Or, will we resist it? (Hughes, 2018)
In order to answer those questions, the author argues, that we only really need to understand homo sapiens and how power, influence and decision-making presents in this species. We know by now that machines can, without showing fatigue, make faster and more accurate decisions than humans. That poses a threat as well as an opportunity to humanity and if history has taught us anything, then we’ll know that humans are reactive to both opportunities and threats. But even more, in our modern day and age, how humans can turn threats into opportunity and vice-a-versa.
The following literature review explores the dynamics between power, influence and the art of strategic decision making in humans as it takes into consideration various sources of literature, which range from books, online as well as published articles and blogs that were written and published during the last decade. This review will then frame that understanding in the context of an immediate future in which AI decision making has already arrived.
Power - “the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behaviour of others or the course of events.”
There is a saying that goes, “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely” - what a wonderful thought. How many times have Hollywood explained to us in excruciating detail how the villain in the story implodes and destroys him/herself in the final battle with the hero? If we rewind each of those movies to the beginning, we find that our villain’s journey started the first time he/she was beaten up on the kindergarten playground, teased about an incredible acne outbreak or a dog that died. At that point vengeance was sworn. And we all know that vengeance without power is nothing more than a hissy fit (Seltzer, 2011). And so, the pursuit of power begins.
We’ll never really know if a person with the word “Chief” in his/her title in the corporate world went through a similar journey in order to claim a position of power and influence. But, yet, influential, literary entities such as the Harvard Business Review has printed their presses dry to come to grips with what real power is in the corporate context. Any search containing the word “power” on HBR’s website will result in numerous published articles by renowned industry leaders.
The aptly titled business blog, www.businessballs.com, lists five types of leadership powers that were coined by John French and Bertram Raven in 1959. French and Raven labelled these types of power as Legitimate power, Reward power, Coercive power, Referent power and Expert power (“French and Raven’s bases of power,” 2019). Knowing the different types of power that are exercised by people in organizations gives us a better understanding of the power landscape. Power can’t exist in a vacuum; it needs oxygen from which it can be ignited and launched. Leaders that apply any number of French and Raven’s five types of power also have specific leadership styles. Although they exert power in a specific way, they also lead in a specific way.
The Polish born psychologist, Kurt Lewin, who during his studies at MIT identified three types of leadership styles named, Authoritarian, Democratic and Laissez-faire (“Kurt Lewin,” 2019). Any combination of the five types of power and three leadership styles can present itself in a leader. Non is necessarily better than the other, it all depends on the environment, circumstances and context. Certain combinations work better for some environments and then the same combination will underperform in another context or environment (Harness, 2019).
But what motivates people to achieve power in an organisation, besides childhood bullying, Acne-vulgaris or the trauma associated with the loss of a pet (Gäbler & Maercker, 2011)? David McClelland, in his 1961 book titled, The Achieving Society, identified three motivators that he believed we all have: a need for achievement, a need for affiliation, and a need for power (McClelland, 2010). McClelland built upon the earlier work of our old friend Abraham Maslow, who created the theory of needs (a.k.a Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – which forever will make us feel guilty when indulging in too much sleeping, eating and sex-capades, because we can’t escape the bottom rung of his insidious pyramid…), which he so eloquently described in his seminal 1943 paper titled, “A Theory of Human Motivation” (Maslow, 1943).
At this point it is necessary to differentiate between leaders and managers. Managers, in general, are more focused on the tactical aspects of business (budgeting, reporting, managing projects, etc.) where leaders are more involved and influential in the overarching vision and mission of an organisation (Arruda, 2016). Leaders must model the way, challenge the process, enable others and inspire a shared vision. The underlying mechanisms of power and leadership/management styles are the same for both these figures. At the end of the day they adhere to and utilize the same driving forces, which enables them to lead and manage.
Influence – “the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behaviour of someone or something, or the effect itself.”
Influence, however, does not stand alone. It has a counterpart called persuasion and the two work together in mysterious ways (Morgan, Cialdini, & Hill, 2012). Any leader with any mixture of power and leadership styles have in some measure the ability to influence and/or persuade people, events or outcomes. I’ll venture as far as saying that influence and persuasion are the main instruments that a leader must effectively wield in his/her daily reign of their domain. For it is through influence and persuasion that they exert power (Medium, 2019).
Decision making – “the act or process of discerning options and choosing a subset or a single one.”
Same as with power, influence and persuasion, does not exist in a vacuum. The oxygen that fuels them is the ability to make decisions. Leaders are faced with copious amounts of information daily and therefore need to be able to discern what information is of value and then decide which of the available options, as presented by the data, are important to pursuit.
Decision making is an art, which requires an array of abilities. One can step back and start off with the highly abstracted question, “How do we decide to decide?” Understanding the process by which individuals makes decision are as important as the various factors that influence decision making (Dietrich, 2010). Contemporary decision analysis has identified several abstract dimensions along which decision processes can be measured and guided (Neal & Spetzler, 2015). Those same dimensions are now challenged and disrupted by the way data is starting to drive decisions in organizations (Vermeulen, 2014). As a driving factor, data has become the central point of decision making (Singh, 2018). Decision making heuristics such as availability, representativeness and affect, can lead to cognitive biases and render decision making processes less effective (Cherry, 2019).
Strategic - adjective – “relating to the identification of long-term or overall aims and interests and the means of achieving them”.
A course of action shapes the strategy wherein an individual or organization anticipates the opponent’s moves as well as its own, and in effectively choosing amongst the various options that presents, steers towards an anticipated outcome (Decker, 2010).
Strategy, per definition, has everything to do with the long-term survival idea and in business it is no different. Whether the strategy is to focus on differentiation (Kokemuller, 2019), acquisition (Picincu, 2018) or growth, they all have one thing in common – survival.
Putting it all together
Let’s consider a use case. An executive is facing a tough strategic decision but has to her disposal the input of an AI entity, which has the capability to process vast quantities of data inside and outside of the organization and present the most logical and rational decision possible for the current context and situation. What would the effect of such an aid be on our executive? Will the executive see the AI’s superior decision making as a threat? Will our executive feel unwanted, untrusted or even un-appreciated due to the AI’s perfect input? Or, will our executive “high-jack” the AI’s decisions and start moulding them towards a specific pre-conceived outcome? Or, will our executive embrace the AI’s input and together with it drive even further the envelope of strategic decision analysis?
It boils down to a one-sided issue to contemplate – how will the human react to inclusion of AI in the decision space? Again, if history has taught us anything, then it is that human decision-making strategies is not one of unalloyed progress toward perfect rationalism. In fact, over the year’s humans have steadily been coming to terms with constraints, both contextual and psychological, on our ability to make optimal choices. Erroneous framing, bounded awareness, excessive optimism - the debunking of Descartes’s rational man threatens to swamp our confidence in our choices, with only improved technology acting as a kind of empirical breakwater (Buchanan & O’Connell, 2006). Ouch! That latter statement strongly suggests that our use case executive will at some stage face the situation where her decisions are governed, tempered and shaped by the AI.
Conclusion
Looking back onto our brief investigation of power, influence, strategy and decision making, one can only marvel at how intricate and complex the decision environment can be. We can find an endless number of permutations amongst individuals based on power drivers and leadership styles all mixed up into a cauldron of personalities, beliefs, ideas, context and agendas. Whether that latter concoction of entities produces individuals with Vulcan-like rationalism or Dopamine crazed decision orgies is and will be always a bit unclear. Looking at it all from that perspective I feel inclined to suggest that our use case executive will eventually be pushed into a dark dusty corner of the decision space.
It might sound unfair to pair our use case executive against AI. Decisions are usually made by group consensus. To be fair, a discussion regarding power, influence and strategic decision making cannot be viewed from only the individual’s point of view. Such a study can gleam insights into the underlying mechanisms of human decision making but, the narrative must be extended towards the group as well. For this, the author suggests a further study into the dynamics of group decision making.
Arruda, W. (2016). 9 Differences Between Being A Leader And A Manager. Retrieved July 13, 2019, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamarruda/2016/11/15/9-differences-between-being-a-leader-and-a-manager/\#51597d824609
Buchanan, L., & O’Connell, A. (2006, January 1). A Brief History of Decision Making. Harvard Business Review, (January 2006). Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2006/01/a-brief-history-of-decision-making
Cherry, K. (2019). How Heuristics Help You Make Quick Decisions or Biases. Retrieved July 13, 2019, from Verywell Mind website: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-heuristic-2795235
Decker, D. (2010). The Ability to Anticipate: A Secret Weapon for Strategic Thinking and Influence DANIEL DECKER. Retrieved August 14, 2019, from DANIEL DECKER website: http://www.danieldecker.net/the-ability-to-anticipate-a-secret-weapon-for-strategic-thinking-and-influence/
Dietrich, C. (2010). Decision Making: Factors that Influence Decision Making, Heuristics Used, and Decision Outcomes. Inquiries Journal, 2(02). Retrieved from http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/180/decision-making-factors-that-influence-decision-making-heuristics-used-and-decision-outcomes
Gäbler, I., & Maercker, A. (2011). Revenge after trauma: Theoretical outline. In M. Linden & A. Maercker (Eds.), Embitterment: Societal, psychological, and clinical perspectives (pp. 42–69). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-211-99741-3_5
Harness, R. (2019). Is There a Perfect Leadership Style? Retrieved July 13, 2019, from http://www.leadershipchallenge.com/educators-section-resources-detail/is-there-a-perfect-leadership-style.aspx
Hughes, M. (2018). Do Or Die: Why Industry Must Embrace AI. Retrieved August 5, 2019, from Forbes website: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikehughes1/2018/11/28/do-or-die-why-industry-must-embrace-ai/
Kurt Lewin. (2019). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kurt_Lewin&oldid=896945198
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0054346
McClelland, D. C. (2010). The Achieving Society. Martino Publishing: Martino Fine Books.
Medium. (2019). The 6 Principles of Persuasion by Dr. Robert Cialdini [Official Site]. Retrieved August 14, 2019, from INFLUENCE AT WORK website: https://www.influenceatwork.com/principles-of-persuasion/
Morgan, N., Cialdini, R. B., & Hill, L. A. (2012). Influence and Persuasion (HBR Emotional Intelligence Series). Retrieved July 13, 2019, from https://hbr.org/product/influence-and-persuasion-hbr-emotional-intelligence-series/10165-PBK-ENG
NCAN. (2019, June 23). Trump’s ‘excellent’ letter to Kim. Retrieved July 10, 2019, from NewsComAu website: https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/donald-trump-sent-an-excellent-letter-to-kim-jongun/news-story/0916bf94ebac80501f46b1d3dcce15ec\#.6jiiv
Neal, L., & Spetzler, C. (2015, May 27). An Organization-Wide Approach to Good Decision Making. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2015/05/an-organization-wide-approach-to-good-decision-making
Picincu, A. (2018). What Are the Different Types of Strategies in Business? Retrieved July 13, 2019, from Bizfluent website: https://bizfluent.com/list-6603373-different-types-strategies-business-.html
Seltzer, L. (2011). The Paradox of Anger: Strength or Weakness? Retrieved August 14, 2019, from Psychology Today website: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the-self/201106/the-paradox-anger-strength-or-weakness
Sincavage, D. (2017, August 16). How Artificial Intelligence will Change Decision-Making for Businesses. Retrieved August 5, 2019, from Tenfold website: https://www.tenfold.com/business/artificial-intelligence-business-decisions
Singh, H. (2018, December 1). Using Analytics for Better Decision-Makingâ-Towards Data Science. Retrieved July 13, 2019, from Medium website: https://towardsdatascience.com/using-analytics-for-better-decision-making-ce4f92c4a025
Vermeulen, F. (2014, January 15). Take the Bias Out of Strategy Decisions. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2014/01/take-the-bias-out-of-strategy-decisions
As much as the author loathes Donald Trump, he admits throwing popcorn, with childish excitement, at the TV each time DT yelled to an apprentice executive, “You’re fired!”↩