While our natural posture is to stick to the things we are used to using, polarization, gridlock, hyper-connectivity, fragmentation, movements, platforms, and exponential technologies suggest “new power[1]” communication strategies are needed to propel new templates for strategic communications. Templates that embody networked and collaborative leadership, including “leaderful” and ownerless engagement models; that cultivate cultures of nimbleness and risk-taking to include younger generations and diverse communities; and that explore and integrate new technologies in smart and thoughtful ways.

Every day, new power models are being developed and increasingly asserted into daily life. From #neveragain, Khan Academy, and SuperPACs that rely on new power values of self-organization, networked governance, open collaboration, and radical transparency. To ownerless campaigns like the ALS ice bucket challenge and #givingtuesday demonstrating that the more agency given to others yields more power for the giver if the giver creates the conditions that allow people to engage in the work, on their own terms, reliant on shared principles. This is the secret sauce of 21^st century communications.

If power is the “ability to produce intended effects,”[2] learning how old and new power each create these effects in their own unique way and learning how to combine and balance them could create a significant advantage for purpose-driven organizations and their missions.

What might your “new profile” be? What new power strategies will allow you to spread ideas by providing the conditions to make them actionable, connected and extensible? To develop a stronger mobilization capacity to include and empower a broader community of supporters and advocates?

Download this presentation to learn about recent Kinetic Seeds research conducted into attributes for becoming 21st-century advocates. You’ll find a set of provocations to help you brainstorm how your organization might capitalize on the newest trends in “new power.”

[1] We use the term “new power” from the book New Power by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms. This must-read offers a new roadmap to building movements, spreading ideas, growing organizations, and leading differently in an age of hyperconnectivity.

[2] Attributed to Bertrand Russell, British philosopher