PowerU 51: Carney's Power Literacy at Davos

#PowerU 51: This week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a speech at Davos that did a lot of things including providing a masterclass in refusing powerlessness—and it perfectly illustrates why power literacy is THE foundational skill for changemakers in the 21st century. I tried to explain why it’s so brilliant in 2 minutes. Didn’t happen. So if you’ve been a PowerU regular, settle in for a Carney Power Literacy mini-series. A little set up: Carney opens with Václav Havel’s story from his seminal power literacy work, Power of the Powerless, about a Czech greengrocer who keeps a sign in his window—“Workers of the world unite”— because the government demands that he put it up. Nobody believes it even as everyone puts the sign up in their own windows. The lesson he’s illustrating is that the system persists because everyone performs compliance. When you take the sign down, when you refuse to reproduce a lie to provide more power to an institution that has power over you, you are able to strip away some of the power bases that institution holds. Carney is telling middle powers to take down the sign but the timing is important too. The sooner they do, the more power they preserve to shape their own futures because refusing powerlessness isn’t about bravado—it’s about marrying values to steely-eyed analysis and building power literate strategy. Watch the full breakdown in the video. Does it answer every question this video provokes. No! Stay tuned. Question for you: Where are you giving people way more power than you want to simply because it feels easier to keep putting up their metaphorical sign in your window? #PowerLiteracy #PowerU #Leadership #Strategy