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Power, agency and influence: a new framework about complex relationships

Tony Fish
9 min readOct 7, 2020

In this post, I am going to explore the relationship between power, agency and influence. The intent is to unpack each of these words and their relationships to each other. Power, agency and influence can have a constructive or destructive relationship cycle. We will explore how power, agency and influence in a constructive cycle lead to better outcomes and conversely how power, agency and influence in a destructive cycle lead to worse outcomes.

We love the analogy about peeling an onion. We peel back one layer to reveal a new similar layer, each layer enabling us to offer a new idea or thinking and adding complexity. Often we use this model for ourselves to get to our inner core and what values drive us.

an onion that is not an onion

As we peel back each layer of power, agency and influence, we will find there more complexity and interconnectedness; much we cannot grasp in the context of decision making and governance. As we peel back more layers of interconnections, we will find there are more dependencies which give rise to layers of uncertainty, ambiguity and remaining is increased risk and uncertainty. No one single outcome is possible; there are always at least two.

We find we are not peeling an onion but unpicking different ideals, beliefs and connectedness. Peeling the onion does not pick up…

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Written by Tony Fish

decision-making sense-making strategy data ethics governance

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