The Architecture of Power Meetup

Webinar: The Architecture of Power
Understanding how power actually works and how to engage it

In organizations, power has a bad reputation. It sounds manipulative or toxic. Serious people prefer to talk about leadership, collaboration, or culture. Power is what other people play with.
Unfortunately, this avoidance has a downside. In order to make good things we need to be able to learn how to navigate power landscapes, otherwise our ideas remain dreams. The most frustration at work is not a lack of competence or weak leadership skills but a problem of power illiteracy.

This webinar provides an introduction to the power of power and influence.
It introduces a simple analytical model, the Power Loop, which describes how power flows through social systems and how this flow can be engaged deliberately. It also shifts attention away from individuals and toward the silent carriers of power: actants. Categories, processes, metrics, roles, standards, tools, and documents quietly shape behavior by defining what feels normal, what feels risky, and what feels impossible—long before any discussion takes place.
Together, these ideas explain why good decisions often fail to materialize, why some problems never reach the agenda, and why change feels so hard even when everyone agrees “something is wrong.”

This webinar is not about personal power - it is not about increasing leadership skills, improving charisma, or networking tipps. It does not teach persuasion techniques or leadership tricks. Instead, it offers a structural lens for understanding how power operates and how it can be engaged deliberately, even without formal authority.

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Contents
• Why power has a bad reputation—and why avoiding it makes change harder
• The Power Loop: how power flows from beliefs to institutions, agendas, decisions, events, and narratives
• Actants: how non-human agents silently shape behavior and outcomes
• Power tactics

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Target Audience

This webinar is designed for anybody who works in organizations and wants to make them a better place.
No prior knowledge of sociology or political theory is required.
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What You Will Learn

After the webinar, you will:
• See power as a structural phenomenon, not a personality trait
• Understand that most decisions are pre-programmed long before something is overtly discussed
• Learn to identify actants that shape behavior in your organization
• Gain a practical mental model for engaging power without relying on formal authority
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This webinar is not about influencing people.
It is about the systems that influence people.