For centuries, our collective understanding of power has been framed by a consensus that is both visible and coercive. We recognize power in the corner office, the command of resources, the architecture of fear, and the mechanisms of control. This consensus narrates power as something held over others a force that compels compliance, rooted in position, possession, or pressure.

Yet, within this clustered narrative, a quieter, more generative form of power is often relegated to the footnotes: the power of vision setting, empowerment, and involvement. While the world consciously studies and unconsciously celebrates power derived from hierarchy and intimidation, we are undergoing a profound, pragmatic shift. It is a shift demanding we revisit the very definition we have lived by.

The Flawed Consensus:- Leadership as Position, Power as Possession

Our conventional script is clear: Leadership is conflated with positional access. To lead is to occupy a rung on a hierarchical ladder, and by virtue of that occupation, to wield power. This power is assumed because the leader controls resources be they financial, institutional, or informational that others want or need. The equation is simple: Position = Resources = Power Over People.

This model is deeply embedded in our institutions, from corporate boards and political theories to nation building projects and religious structures. My own explorations into development, social architecture, and political theory reveal how this consensus manifests a default operating system for human organization. But this system is now flashing with error messages. In our programmatic, ever changing world, this narrative is meeting its question mark.

The Emergent Facade of Power as Creative Agency

A new, transformative understanding is reemerging from the periphery. Power is not merely held over; it is exercised through creative and generative agency. In this frame, power resides in the ability to do, to create, and to initiate.

Consider the lifecycle of a transformative idea: CAIR

1. Conception: The birth of an ideation beneficial to humanity’s growth.
2. Actualization: Its growth into an actionable initiative.
3. Implementation: Its execution and deepening.
4. Regeneration: Its rebirth through creative, innovative modification.

Each phase is a site of power. Every mind engaged in this process the thinker, the planner, the executor, the innovator is a power holder. The critical difference is no longer if one holds power, but how one exercises it. The distinction lies in visibility and communication: those who claim their space and articulate their influence are deemed “powerful.” Those who operate in essential but silent collaboration, or who withdraw from the limelight, are mislabeled as “non-powerful.” This is a catastrophic misreading of the power landscape.

The Leadership-Power Divorce Leads Towards a New Synthesis

This necessitates a divorce between leadership and positional authority. Leadership becomes an act, not a title. It is the exercise of one’s inherent agency to influence a trajectory. The quiet coder architecting an inclusive platform, the community elder mediating conflict, the artist reframing a national narrative, the teacher empowering critical thought all are exercising leadership through their unique power of agency.

The “return of viability and populist ideology” we witness globally is, in part, a clamorous symptom of this transition. It is a messy, often disruptive, search for a power model beyond the old consensus. The future belongs not to those who merely hold positions, but to those who can effectively exercise their agency to set vision, communicate it, and empower collective action.

An Imperative for Ethiopia is Awakening Our Distributed Power

For Ethiopia, in a transformative space where something new is straining to be born, this philosophical pivot is not academic it is existential. The normative, pre-conceived model of power tied to positions, structures, and zero-sum resource control is not serving us. It limits our imagination and concentrates agency in too few hands.

Our national task, therefore, is to consciously and courageously re-narrate power. We must dissect it, discuss it, and define it in ways that are clearly understandable and exercisable by the individual and the collective. The future we wish to see a prosperous, beautiful, and celebratory home will not be birthed by waiting for power to be granted from above. It will be built by the awakening of the power within.

Each of us must awaken to our innate capacity as leaders, resource managers, vision setters, and empowerers. The power to birth a nation is distributed across all its minds and hearts. It is time to move beyond the consensus of power over, and to embrace the generative, collaborative power to and with. Our transformation depends not on a change of guards, but on a change of consciousness a recognition that the power we have been seeking is, and has always been, within us.

Ethiopia’s future will not be granted from others. It will be built from within by millions of citizens awakening to the power they already hold. The old power is a wall it excludes, divides, and confines. The new power is a web it connects, strengthens, and holds up something beautiful, together.

Let’s  us our power to build the web!