BOOK NOTES

This book is about the power we can create by giving away power to a third thing—namely, “us together.” And it gives power back to us again and again. In doing this, leaders turn the anxiety of uncertainty into the energy that drives people to build big things together. It’s like treating volunteers in campaigns as if they were paid staff. It can make moot your flake rate—which is the percentage of volunteers who say they will show up to do something they promised to do and then don’t.

Author Barzun begins with a long story of how the US got its’ great seal design. This process took longer than the Revolutionary War itself and was approved by Congress in 1782. Its design is pretty much the same today with a radiant constellation above the eagle symbolizing…out of many, one…with 13-star pieces representing the colonies. Fast forward 150 years to President FDR. He re-introduces through the US Treasury a new design to be added to the new one-dollar bill. While the constellation remained, Roosevelt added a pyramid structure across from the great seal with the constellation. He had decided to fight the Great Depression with massive, centralized programs in Washington. The pyramid became the symbol of that consolidated power. The Treasury obliged. Now…pull out a dollar bill to see both clear designs.

Barzun’s book is about the pyramid versus the constellation. Thinking in pyramid, we try to eliminate uncertainty by paying attention to structure, efficiency, and the power of hierarchy. Thinking in constellation, we set motion towards possibility allowing for many paths. Vision, reciprocal commitment, and power are given away. These two pieces found on our dollar bill serve as Barzun’s metaphor for two different types of power.

CONSTELLATION MAKERS

Remember Encyclopedia Britannica? Founded originally in Scotland in the 1760’s, it was purchased by Sears in the 1920’s. That’s when it was constantly being republished with new material and sold by a large sales force across America. By 1990, revenues reached $600 million to purchase books that were an investment in your child’s education. The secret of course was that customers rarely opened the books.

Enter Microsoft and Bill Gates in 1985. They tried to buy Britannica to digitize it and stop selling the $1500-2000 set books. Brittanica said no, so Microsoft went to Funk and Wagnall, another encyclopedia publisher where they were successfully renaming their product Encarta. Now it became digitized with video, other learning links, and a much smaller price tag. Result: in 1995…just five years after their highest recorded revenues, Britannica was out and Encarta was in.

Enter Jimmy Wales, a 30 something with a PhD from Alabama. He was one of those kids who actual read the encyclopedias. His startup, called Nupedia, was going to create a high-quality for-profit encyclopedia online by tapping into expert’s passions to teach to larger audiences. His goal was to build a better reservoir of the world’s knowledge without paying for content. And he wasn’t going to charge people to use it. A staff member suggested using a new technology called Wiki that allowed people to write together. By 2009, Microsoft’s Encarta was out and Wikipedia was in.

Barzun’s point was the constellation mindset made Wikipedia possible. Jimmy Wales gave up on the Pyramid mindset and enabled possibility.

MAKING THE MINDSET

In 2005, the NY Times wrote Peter Drucker’s obituary, calling him the 20th Century’s most influential thinker to corporate, nonprofit, and government leaders. Harvard’s top guru’s also named Drucker as the guru of gurus. And who did Peter Drucker name as the brightest star in management? Mary Parker Follett. Her intellectual soulmate was star professor William James who wrote The Principles of Psychology while at Harvard in 1890. He changed thinking, including Mary when he advised giving love and trust first to people…not withhold it without any expectation.

Mary studied and wrote about 39 men who at the time had once held Speaker of the US House position for her senior thesis. She concluded most effective leaders did not rely on hierarchal power or personal powers like speaking. Rather, they developed a creative blend of formal and informal power she called the “unwritten practice.” Cities adopted her community center movement where space and power were given away as an ideal of her notion of participatory democracy. She put people at the center of the organizational enterprise. She believed the only good outcome in meetings was integration—when members make a new thing together. She believed energy and power are amplified when you welcome what is different, not shut it out. She would have embraced diversity as a fact but inclusion as a choice.

Mary encouraged leaders to allow all members of a team to share their views and study problems from different angles. Her “power with” not “power over” became a phenomenon in the 1920’s. Classic constellation mindset, not pyramidal. Other later thinkers picked up her mantle over the succeeding years. Stephen Covey’s 8th habit was interdependence over independence. He believed that the opposite of winning and losing is engaging and creating together. Finally, consider Jim Collin’s level 5 leaders in his classic Good to Great business study. Their humility and intense determination were for group achievement. They never aspired to be placed on a pedestal. Your destination is a leap….with, to, and through others.

Barzun used the story of US ambassador to Great Britian John Winant to demonstrate practical application of these ideas. Winant succeeded Ambassador Joe Kennedy who advised Americans to flee England during WW2 as a lost cause. Winant wasn’t smooth, had a stutter, and was shy having been appointed by FDR even though he was a Republican. Winant dedicated his whole being to make the British cause the American cause. He and Churchill became friends as Winant constantly urged FDR to join the British in standing up to Hitler. Winant was even called upon to settle the coal miners’ strike (a threat to the war effort) in NE England where he invoked the battle against fascism with the fight for social democracy. It was solved the next day.

It was Churchill who came to America after the war to remind us of the special relationship between the US and Britain….the energy of free people together. Again, winning wasn’t the answer. Rather, mutual assistance and collaboration to increase each other’s power.

GROWING THE CONSTELLATION

Consider fund raising. Most people want to use their money for a cause greater than themselves. In his first term election as President, Obama tried something different in his campaign fund raising. It was easier to get fewer people to give larger sums to reach financial goals. Instead, his campaign went after donors who have less money, but the numbers grew themselves. 1000’s of special relationships grew. His events became the template for in person low dollar fund raisers. Fund raising this way became like farming…plant and spread seeds.

Barzun offers a couple of metaphors. The first is to think of a rain forest compared with a desert. Each gets the same amount of energy from the sun. What they do with it is totally the opposite. The rainforest recirculates and recombines the energy through many layers. A desert takes the energy, absorbs a small amount as heat, and reflects the rest back up …unused and uncirculated. The rainforest branch and connect.

The second metaphor is even more compelling. It comes from a distiller in Kentucky, who offers advice on making good whiskey or good things of all kinds. The first step is fermentation. You need natural ingredients, including the invisible yeast that serves as catalyst to get the water and grains bubbling. You need the right environment. Not too cold, not too hot. If you stop at this stage, you’ll simply have bad beer. The second step is distillation. Refining things down to just the essentials. If you stopped here, you would have vodka. The third step is maturation and the key to that is time and a barrel getting warmer and cooler with the seasons repeatedly. These three steps represent rather good ways to make anything better.

Finally, NPR compiled ideas from 350 commencement speeches and listed the most common messages. Here are the top five: (1) Change the world (2) Listen to your inner voice (3) Work hard (4) Don’t give up (5) Embrace failure.

Barzun suggests that these are pyramid propaganda. He recasts the advice in a Constellation mindset. (1) Change your mindset (2) Share your inner voice (3) Work through hard things together (4) Give up power to make more (5) Embrace uncertainty.

Publisher: Optimism Press, New York City, NY, 2021