What is the difference between power and responsibility?

While Power is the ability to make things happen, Responsibility is driven by attempting to answer the question.

Power is like owning a Gun to protect your family. Responsibility is to Keep it Away from your Kids.

The authoritative power is granted through some form of consensus or agreement by other people. Responsibility means that a person or entity must answer for their actions to the authority in power, and the actions taken by a responsible party typically have a moral, ethical, or rational foundation.

The objective is simple: ‘Better decision-making’. The only issue is that there are so many different views over what we mean by ‘better’. At the core of all decision-making is the need to balance Power with Responsibility, as the vehicle for resolving the ‘better’ question. This article explores why that is so difficult? It also argues that exploring the concept of Wisdom can provide invaluable insights into how to achieve the most effective balance between Power and Responsibility, which is central to what our values mean in practice, as well as how we incorporate ethics into our decision-making.

It is essential to start by recognising that not all change is progress, and that there are, inevitably, differences in how different people interpret what they mean by progress. The importance of that difference between change and progress is at the heart of most of our decision-making difficulties, especially in particularly sensitive areas that involve our values and ethics.

Wise decision-making also, inevitably, involves moral/ethical choices and this occurs every time we take a decision. Hence it is not surprising that we find that the comments we might define as Wisdom are essentially comments about the relationship between people, or their relationship with society, and the universe as a whole. These statements are generally globally recognised as relatively timeless and they are insights that help us provide meaning to the world about us. In theory, the use of teams, committees, even opinion polls (and other efforts to capture The Wisdom of Crowds) are attempts to capture collective Wisdom. But what certainly surprised me when I started looking at this subject, was the paradoxical gap between how critically important this area was in all our lives, and yet how often it seems to be almost totally ignored in Futurist, Strategy, Knowledge Management, and even Ethics, literature. Another paradox is that we appear to be spending more and more time focusing on learning knowledge, or facts, that have a relatively short shelf life, and less and less time on knowledge that overlaps with Wisdom, that has a long shelf life. Why is that? What can we do about it?

Western sociological and management/leadership literature is full of references to Power. How to get it? How to keep it? And How to prevent it being taken away? In parallel, but rarely in the same studies, there is also an enormous amount of literature on the concept of Responsibility.

While Power is the ability to make things happen, Responsibility is driven by attempting to answer the question: ‘In whose interest is the Power being used?’ Yet the two concepts of Power and Responsibility are simply different sides of the same coin; they are the Ying and Yang of our behaviour; they are how we balance our relations with ourselves with the interests of others, which is at the core of what we mean by our values. Power makes things happen, but it is through the exercise of an appropriate balance between Power and Responsibility that helps ensure as many ‘good’ things happen as possible.

This critical relationship between Power and Responsibility is reinforced by examining how these two concepts interact in practice, through a variety of different management dimensions.

First, it is useful to visualise a two-by-two (Boston) box (see diagram below), with Power (+&-) along the horizontal axis, and Responsibility (+&-) along the vertical. In one square, where there is a strong Power-driven (+) culture, combined with little sense of Responsibility (-), there is a high probability of megalomaniac or dictatorial behaviour. While another square would combine a high degree of Responsibility (+), with little Power (-), which is a classic recipe for stress. In fact, this is a major cause of relatively unaddressed individual, organizational and societal stress, reinforced by many empowerment programmes, that are more concerned with giving individuals more Responsibility than giving them more real authority (ie: Power). A further square has low levels of both Power (-) and Responsibility (-) producing the net result of ‘drop-outs’, whether individual, organisational or societal. This category is often viewed as an attractive option when individuals consider it relative to the alternative to the stress, which is all too often associated with situations where the feeling of impotence is associated with the feeling of Responsibility. The ideal is to work towards the final square where there is an appropriate balance between Power and Responsibility (+/+). Although this compartmentalisation is an inevitable simplification, it does show how the underlying pattern of Power <> Responsibility relationships influence individual behaviour, which is particularly critical in areas related to ethical decision making.

These basic relationships between Power and Responsibility are confirmed from experience in several other organisation/societal dimensions:

1.       Organisational culture can be considered as either one that encourages the sharing of information, as opposed to a ‘Knowledge is Power’ culture. (Although I consider it is more appropriate to use the word Information, rather than Knowledge, for reasons that are discussed in more detail later.) Almost all management techniques (Total Quality Management, Learning Organisations, and Knowledge Management, to name but three) are based on the assumption of a sharing knowledge culture and these techniques are unlikely to be effective within a ‘knowledge is power’ culture. Teams, and virtually all other management techniques, flourish best under a Responsibility-driven culture. In addition, as we increasingly move further into a knowledge economy, the effective sharing of information/knowledge will become an even more critical success factor for all our decision-making whether as individuals, within organisations, or for society as a whole.

2.       It is often argued that people oppose change, when the underlying problem is that there is a difference of opinion on how to define progress - or what we mean by ‘better’. In a culture where those affected by change are either in control, or they trust those driving the change, there is usually general agreement on how progress is defined, and there is little opposition to any change initiatives. The greater the trust levels, the easier it will be to undertake change, simply because there is general agreement that the change will be equated with progress. Despite all the talk of the need for change in many situations, what is really required is the need for greater emphasis on the concept of progress. Unfortunately, it is very rarely the case that all change can be equated with progress. This difference between change and progress is at the heart of most organisational difficulties in this area, partly because the vast majority of change is still top down driven, and this is, unfortunately, combined with the widespread existence of a Power-driven culture, which has fostered a breakdown in trust in far too many situations.

3.       Another important dimension of the Power-Responsibility relationship arises in many organisations where they experience the damaging effects of bullying, corruption, as well as sexism and racism. These problem behaviours are, essentially, in the vast majority of cases, essentially little more than the ‘Abuse of Power’. If individuals took a more Responsible-driven (i.e., ‘others focused’) approach to their personal relationships, there would be an enormous reduction in these harmful anti-social behaviours.

4.       The issues considered above are also reflected in the language we use to discuss them. Phrases, such as ‘Corridors of Power’, ‘Power Struggles’, even ‘Lusting after Power’, are widely used, but would not attitudes and behaviours be different if the language used was more focused on using phrases such as ‘Corridors of Responsibility’. Why do we never hear about ‘Responsibility Struggles’? And certainly there are very few, if any, examples of people being accused of ‘Lusting after Responsibility’. Why not? If Power and Responsibility are two sides of the same coin, shouldn’t the words Power and Responsibility be virtually interchangeable?

The greater the level of a Responsibility-driven decision-making culture, the more effective and sustainable will be the consequences of that process; and the less regulation will be required to manage the inter-relationship between the various stakeholders. In contrast, more and more regulations will be needed in an attempt to regulate Power-driven cultures, where those regulations are designed, in theory, as an attempt to make the decision-making processes more accountable, and so encourage more responsible behaviour. If we all behaved more responsibly in our relationship with each other, there would be much less pressure for more and more regulation and legislation.

In addition, it can be argued that it was a pity that there has been such an emphasis on ‘Rights’ during the twentieth century (The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Declaration of Human Rights, etc.), rather than emphasising a combination of Rights with Responsibilities. The reason for this apparent separation is worthy of further exploration. First, those arguing for Rights, tended to feel that any emphasis on Responsibilities diminished their case for Rights, while those with Power, who feel they would have to give up some of it by making themselves more accountable, also feel that any emphasis on Responsibilities would only result in undermining their position. Unfortunately, the implicit conspiracy between these two positions resulted in an important opportunity having been missed. Increasingly political agendas, both national and international, are now being driven by a dual focus on Rights and Responsibilities, and this also needs to be reflected in our personal and organisational agendas. Again, in almost all current ethical debates (as well as legal and other regulatory structures), the ultimate objective is to try to achieve the appropriate balance of Rights and Responsibilities. If individuals behaved more Responsibly and ethically towards each other, it would be much more likely that the net result would be a higher standard of ethical decision making overall. This is a classic case where the outcome and process are closely inter-linked.

In the context of the above comments, it is worth mentioning that probably90% of violent behaviour arises because there is an imbalance, or discontinuity, between Power (self-focused), and our sense of Responsibility (others-focused), which leads to a breakdown in the ability to communicate effectively between those involved. This breakdown becomes even more acute, and problematic, if it is combined with an inability to undertake a constructive dialogue in the first place—a point that will be expanded on later.

Why is this relationship between Power and Responsibility so important to the debate about leadership and ethics? Simply because, in essence, leadership is nothing more than the ‘well informed, Responsible, use of Power’. The more the leadership related decisions are Responsibility-driven (i.e., the more they are genuinely concerned with the wider interest), not only will they be better informed decisions, but the results are much more likely to be genuinely reflect the long term interests of all concerned, which also happens to be a sound foundation for improving their ethical quality.

Maybe you responsible, but not necessarily to have the power

But when you have the power you ll be responsible

every power comes with a greater responsibility - spiderman

The ability to perform as supreme is Power and to not make misuse of power is Responsiblity ...... in short & simple words !!

Power is for strong accountability and responsibility is for execution.

Responsability make power to achieve any thing but power dont make u responsable for any thing u dont want to do it.