Akin Akintayo: Stewarding the Use of Power

Wednesday, 4 November 2026

Stewarding the Use of Power

Responsibility rarely appreciated

With power, it is said, comes great responsibility, which I am afraid is rarely appreciated by those who hold it. It is understood instead by those on the receiving end of it, and sometimes only once that power has been lost.

People have wielded power without any consideration of the qualitative and quantitative consequences of what that exercise of power affects.

Authority that resists questioning

Understanding power is an interesting concept. I find myself in situations where people with administrative authority, and therefore essentially powerful, enforce their will expecting never to be questioned, daring anyone to challenge their decisions.

Whilst I am rarely confrontational, I can be quite persuasive. There is something about life, experience, and the ability to communicate that allows for a rather subtle use of power, one that can change the effect of how others use theirs.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

Months of quiet resistance

For months, I was under the stressful and overwhelming use of power from above to implement solutions I was neither comfortable nor confident in.

The change itself was a worthy one, intended to improve the user experience of remote users across the board, in an environment where the inefficiencies were costing an estimated £1m a week. The pressure, in that light, was understandable. It was also pushing us towards a solution that was not ready.

None of my misgivings were intended to stall anything; they were there to inform, and they informed to the extent that what was beginning to look like the abuse of power eventually eased off.

It was not one single event, but a progressive occurrence of battling the odds against expediency, until eventually the people involved drew up chairs to listen to my concerns.

When urgency met reality

At the same time, management were pushing for emergency and immediate implementations, even as issues that could not be ignored emerged.

There was also a miscommunication that almost put everything we were trying to do in jeopardy. What we were planning to do and what was relayed to the user community were not the same thing, and the gap between them caused panic. The whole communication had to be revised completely.

Providence, not luck

It would be easy to call what followed luck, but it was not. It was the combination of the persuasion, the issues, and the miscommunication that created a perfect storm of providence, one that applied the brakes and forced a fundamental review of everything we were doing.

It was the kind of rethink that returned us to what should have been due process all along. Everything had been moving towards unreasonably immediate implementation, but the rethink bought us more than a week to put the proper processes in place.

Suddenly, I had more than a breather. I had the scope to do things right, as I shepherded the proposal from technical review, through approval, and on to the mass deployment that starts tomorrow.

Stewardship over naked power

The power of persuasion does hold significantly more influence than the naked use of power to achieve ends for ends' sake.

However, it is the stewardship of power that matters more. Stewardship includes the understanding of restraint, the willingness to be accountable, and knowing the responsibility that comes with having custodianship of power rather than ownership of it. It is knowing when to use that power, and when to hold off before it becomes the reckless use, or abuse, of it.

So much can be achieved when you understand the power of use as distinct from the use of power. I find that life does equip you with a great deal more wisdom, and wisdom is considerably more powerful, even when others seem to wield power without the background that life and experience give you for the just use and exercise of responsibility.

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