Power of Giving Away Power

How do great leaders thrive in uncertain times? By changing their mindsets about power.

“A leadership manifesto like you’ve never read before. Every page is eye-opening, provocative and energising.” Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit

“This book is a breakthrough. I’m buying a dozen copies to share with friends and colleagues.” Seth Godin, author of The Practice

“Matthew Barzun might well be the first modest man to write a great book on leadership. This is a gift.” Richard Thaler, Novel Prize laureate and co-author of Nudge

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What if the biggest obstacle to organizational performance is your leadership structure itself?

For decades, we've debated top-down versus bottom-up leadership. But both approaches trap organizations in the same outdated shape: the Pyramid. The Pyramid, with its hoarded authority and rigid hierarchies, blocks the innovation, agility, and engagement that modern businesses desperately need.

The alternative is Constellations: a fundamentally different organizational model that distributes power strategically rather than centralizing it.

Drawing on his experience as an entrepreneur, political campaigner, and U.S. Ambassador, Matthew Barzun reveals how the Constellation approach transforms teams into dynamic networks where each member operates as both an autonomous leader and an integrated collaborator.

What you'll learn:

• Why conventional hierarchy fails at speed, creativity, and talent retention
• How to structure teams as interconnected networks that scale without bureaucracy
• Why giving away power multiplies your influence and organizational capacity

These principles drove a digital payments revolution, built the world's largest encyclopaedia, and reinvented political organizing. Barzun distils case studies from Visa, Wikipedia, and Obama's presidential campaigns into actionable insights for leaders navigating complexity, managing distributed teams, and building cultures of innovation.

The Power of Giving Away Power shows you how to lead by distributing authority. The question is whether you can afford not to.

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“An extraordinary book about human flourishing, about linking properly to the best bits of ourselves and others to move mountains. Enlightening and brain reviving.” Alain de Botton

‘A brilliant challenge to conventions that have held back organisations for decades and a crisp playbook for making distributed leadership work for everyone.” Ted Sarandos, co-CEO and chief content officer of Netflix

Matthew Barzun has always been fascinated by how we can stand our and fit in at the same time. He helped countries do both when he served as US ambassador to the United Kingdom and to Sweden. He helped citizens do both as a national finance chair or Barack Obama by pioneering new ways to have a stronger voice in politics. And he helped tech consumers do both as an entrepreneur when he joined a team of three to start up CNET Networks in the early 1990s. Barzun was raised on the East Coast, started his career on the West Coast, and settled in the middle in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife, Brooke, and their three children.