Power U 48: Understand Rules to Change Systems
We’re in a mini-series right now, drawing lessons from a power simulation that Lyndsay Poaps and I ran with 30 community advocates and changemakers earlier this year.
Lesson 2: If you want to change systems, you need to understand the rules of the system you’re changing.
I could run a 24-hour channel on great policy solutions that never happened—not because people didn’t care or didn’t agree, but because:
👉 No one knew how to navigate the rules to get the decision through
👉 Or the few people who did know the rules weren’t motivated to act, and used procedural control to block change.
In the Power Game that Lyndsay and I ran, participants actually landed on a solution that worked for everyone—but they couldn’t bring it to a formal decision in time because they didn’t know the procedural pathways to get it to the floor.
This happens in real life every day.
People often say, “Why don’t you just brief us on the rules at the start?” Because that’s not how power works. In real systems, rules are often hidden, opaque, or gate-kept by those who benefit from the status quo.
✨ When people do learn the rules, they unlock enormous power to create change.
It doesn’t make transformation inevitable, but it makes it far more likely. The rules are always written down somewhere:
📍 Government → rules of order, procedural bylaws
📍 Unions/associations → constitutions, bylaws, policies
📍 Institutions & corporations → governance manuals, mandate letters, board procedures.
💡 Great ideas aren’t enough. Power is knowing how to turn ideas into decisions.
Tara Mahoney
Watch the full video on LinkedIn!