"We are in the middle of a massive power struggle. Not just in our political or economic arenas, but also within our organizations. This power struggle rears its head daily, making our work and our existence fragile. We often miss, ignore, or downplay this power struggle because we've spent so much time as leaders talking about how to get power. So once we arrive, we expect things to fall into place. But we rarely ask the harder question: What happens when we get it?"
"But power, defined by activist and writer Alicia Garza in her book The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart is "the ability to make decisions that affect your own life and the lives of others, the freedom to shape and determine the story of who we are...and having the ability to reward and punish and decide how resources are distributed.""
Massive power struggles occur across political, economic, and organizational spheres, affecting daily work and organizational stability. Leaders often treat power as binary, equating titles, budgets, and platforms with unlimited capacity to create change. Such assumptions encourage hoarding power and viewing peers with suspicion. Power, defined by Alicia Garza, is the ability to make decisions affecting lives, shape collective identity, and reward, punish, and determine resource distribution. Power is situational, shifting like a kaleidoscope rather than a fixed telescope. Multiracial, multicultural organizations reflecting demographic futures require attention to representation, including at least 20 percent BIPOC presence and 40 percent women and femmes in leadership.
Read at Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]