Authority is given, not taken

Mar 9, 2012

Real authority is not something that you can take, that you can purchase, that you can steal. It’s something that other people give you freely of their own accord. There’s no other way to get it. It’s important to distinguish power from authority - power is only ever taken, and never given. The two things are closely related - having authority in a sub-group (i.e. the armed forces, or the engineering department) can help you acquire power in a wider sphere. Authority is better than power, because having authority means that people want to do what you tell them. In New Zealand, where I grew up, this notion is wonderfully captured in the word “mana”, borrowed and adapted from Maori:

“mana”, taken from the Maori, refers to a person or organization of people of great personal prestige and character.Sir Edmund Hillary, is considered to have great mana both because of his accomplishments and of how he gave his life to service. Perceived egotism can diminish mana…

In Australian culture, some of the few people who have attained “mana” in general society are Sirs Don Bradman, Fred Hollows, and Weary Dunlop. Politicians are generally not eligible.

Obviously there’s all sorts of applications of this concept in society, and in politics. For instance, governments that have power without authority will eventually fall, democracy or no (the longer it takes, the more people will die as it falls).

I’m interested here in this blog on how that affects standards. And what I’ve seen is that it doesn’t matter how much power is applied to get a standard to be adopted, if the standard doesn’t have any authority, it won’t make any difference. I’m not saying that power doesn’t make a difference - it does. But power is only useful to the degree that the standard itself has authority.

In practical terms, what this means is that if a government picks an unsuitable standard, it doesn’t matter how hard it pushes it, it’s not going to fly. This really frustrates people in government, used as they are to the exercise of power. But somehow - and I’m not actually exactly sure why - power evaporates and any victory is only apparent and fleeting.

Authority is given, not taken, and this is particularly true in the arena of standards.

p.s. when I re-read this, I guess some people various places are going to feel I am implying that the some particular choice of standard X by project/program/government Y for use Z is wrong. Some are, some aren’t. The really great thing is that we only really find out retrospectively ;-)