Case: Robert Moses

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From the course by University of Pennsylvania

Influence

95 ratings

University of Pennsylvania

Influence

95 ratings

Course 4 of 4 in the Specialization Achieving Personal and Professional Success

What does it mean to be influential? How does one persuade others to pursue a unified goal? How does one leverage power? In this course, you’ll learn how to develop influence and to become more effective in achieving your organizational goals. Professor Cade Massey of the Wharton School has designed this course to help you understand the framework of power and influence and the dynamics of effective networks, and shows you how to develop your skills of persuasion and leverage. By the end of this course, you’ll know your own strengths and how to use them to get what you need, how to gain power and influence, and how to leverage relationships and alliances to achieve your goals in both business and in life.

From the lesson

Module 1

In this module, we’ll begin by defining influence. You’ll weigh the pros and cons of proactivity and political ability, and find the right balance to get any job done within your organization. You’ll learn different models of power structures and dynamics, and discover the importance of flexibility, situational awareness, and agency. By the end of this module, you’ll be better able to analyze organizational structure, recognize processes within your organization that need improvement, and use your power of influence to optimize these processes.

Course Introduction2:31

What Is Power?6:47

Just-World Fallacy5:43

Case: Sergio de Mello11:54

Themes from de Mello4:06

Foundations of Social Power: French & Raven8:07

What About You?2:29

Situation Awareness6:50

Case: Cuban Missile Crisis6:48

Allison's Three Models of Power13:09

Implications8:42

Case: Robert Moses8:26

The Sources of Moses' Power3:35

Themes from Moses10:45

Meet the Instructors

Cade Massey
Practice Professor
The Wharton School

Earlier in this module, we emphasised the importance of organizational processes.

This model two that Graham Allison introduced us to.

And a master of organizational processes is Robert Moses.

He is a big figure in the field of power and influence, and for good reason.

We'll understand more of that as we go through here.

But it's also a perfect place to start, coming out of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Because one of his biggest sources of power

was his mastery of organizational processes.

I want to tell you a quick story about that and

this story comes from The Power Broker.

Most of what we know about Robert Moses comes from Robert Caro's book about him in

the early 70s, this was Caro's first book.

Caro's gone on to write a four volume,

about to be five volume, biography of Lyndon Johnson.

He writes essentially a thousand page book every ten years and

his first was on Robert Moses.

So Moses was Transportation Commissioner in New York.

He was actually a commissioner of many different agencies around the New York

area in the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s.

Into the early 70s, Robert Moses held power in New York, it is an amazing run.

People have called him the most influential figure in New York City in

the 20th Century.

And there is no example, across the US of anyone in another city,

who held power as long as he did.

So how did he hold power that long?

What can we understand about power from observing what Robert Moses did?

So a quick story from The Power Broker, and

especially tapping into this issue of organizational processes.

So one of Moses's responsibilities included the Triborough Bridge and

Tunnel Authority.

This was the early 30s, this was the dawn of the use of authorities in the US.

And authorities were very focused on particular causes, particular needs.

Need a new bridge built?

Well, we'll organize an authority, they can collect tolls on the bridge,

once the bridge is paid off the authority goes away.

So it was an independent borrowing authority and, like the other ones,

it was for the purpose of collecting tolls on the bridges it built and managed.

And it lived separate from state agencies, it was it's own thing.

But it was governed by the laws of New York State.

And Moses was happy to have this way to build a bridge, but

Moses was a man of great ambition.

Moses wanted to build lots of bridges, and lot of roads, and lots of parkways.

He wanted to transform the infrastructure in New York area and he was very,

very good at it.

So this was limiting, that this thing was so focused and

limited in time, it would go away.

So he faced a number of problems, he was also bound by the state laws.

He could only contract personnel in a certain way.

He couldn't hire people to do long term planning, for example,

he couldn't work them at overtime.

He had to live by these state laws, which didn't fit with the way he wanted to work.

He was also limited to building bridges and roads that led to bridges.

So it's very focused on bridges.

That's kind of the whole concept of authority,

at least early in the US was around bridges.

There was one exception with the New York Harbor, but otherwise,

it was around these very precise infrastructure projects.

And then, the last problem was that the bridges made too much money.

The tolls paid off the bridge in no time at all.

And the maintenance required for the bridge was pretty low, and so

the authority would be up, build the bridge, and then it went away.

And all this revenue that he could produce disappeared as well.

So he didn't have the resources to do what he wanted to do.

So, what does he do about this?

How does he navigate these problems?

Here's Moses, he's not an elected official.

In fact, he had run for office early on, realized he wasn't going to win office,

and took this other root to influence.

He had developed expertise in drafting laws, he was well known in Albany,

he had a good track record, he had gotten many things built and done.

And so he had the confidence of the lawmakers in Albany.

Albany's the state capitol of New York.

And so his trick was to change the rules, essentially.

He got the law regarding the powers of authorities and

the nature of bonds changed.

He did this by literally writing legislation in Albany on it.

So under the new rules that he wrote, the Authority could retire and

issue new bonds.

Under the new rules,

the Authority could build projects not inconsistent with bridges.

So remember, previously, they were limited to bridges and roads leading to bridges.

Now they can do anything they want to as long

as they're not inconsistent with bridges.

This is as liberal as one could write that.

And then finally the Authority was not bound

by the civil service rules that applied to the government agencies.

So how did he do this, how did he pull this off?

So Carol walks us through this amazing story of, if the legislators and

the public officials had known that he was doing this,

they wouldn't have let it go, right?

So how did he do it?

He did a couple of things.

Mostly he surreptitiously dropped the verbiage into the back of the bill.

Or he would use a clause late in the bill that directly contradicted the obvious

clause in the front of the bill in this direction.

So partly because he was good, partly because they trusted him,

he was able to do that.

But that wouldn't be sufficient if, once it came to light, they could change it.

That was a real trick here.

How could he keep it from being changed?

He did that because he wrote this, not just into legislation,

he wrote it into the contracts that went with the bonds.

This is something he saw, a capability he saw of authorities,

that no one else had seen.

That bonds once issued are contracts from the bond issuers to the bond holders.

It’s a contract and

contracts are protected by the constitution of the United States.

Nobody can supersede a contract, no state authority,

nothing less than the constitution can contradict a contract.

So once he wrote these specs, these changes in regulations,

into the contracts associated with the bonds,

he had a contract that the state officials had no power over whatsoever.

So that was the trick, and then there was one last element, and that was well,

what about the fact that the funds, they pay off the bridge too quickly.

Therefore, you issue the bonds, fine,

but you've gotta retire the bonds as soon as the thing is done.

This was his last trick here.

He wrote, this was an example of his burying deep in legislation,

terms that completely contradict the obvious one.

At the top of the legislation, the existence of the Authority,

it says same as it always did, once this thing is paid off it goes away.

But buried deep it writes, the Authority shall have power, from time to time,

to refund any bonds by the issuance of new bonds.

Whether the bonds to be refunded have or have not matured, and

may issue bonds partly to refund bonds then outstanding and partly for

any other corporate purpose.

Basically, he can do whatever he wants to.

He can issue bonds any time he wants to and, remember,

that in those bonds, are these contracts that give him these rights.

That can't be superseded by local authorities or

state authorities, they're protected by the constitution.

It is a remarkable power grab and it protected him.

It gave him the power, essentially, to do what he wanted to do for a lifetime.

It's really not much of an exaggeration to say for a lifetime.

He secured his power by mastering the organizational processes that

govern the Authority.

People didn't realize this for a while,

but once he had done this, he didn't hold back.

And the mayor in New York at the time was Fiorello La Guardia, and

he had been working with La Guardia.

He was going to on to work with La Guardia, and La Guardia, of course,

was a very popular mayor.

But La Guardia,

when he heard that Moses had started hiring people in a very different way.

Hiring people he wanted to, running them in a way that conflicted with municipal

guidelines, La Guardia wrote him and he said, he basically protested.

And Moses said, look, I'll take it up with my lawyers and the bondholders.

And La Guardia's going, the bondholders?

La Guardia says, the Mayor establishes the policy for

the city and the Authority bondholders have absolutely nothing to say.

Moses's reply was quite a succinct, he said,

I think you'd better read the agreements and contracts.

He had checkmated La Guardia, he had checkmated La Guardia for his lifetime.

And with that power,

he went on to exercise extraordinary influence over the New York area.

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