Fortune, CEO Daily

Fortune’s World’s Greatest Leaders list is out this morning, and at the top of it are a bunch of kids—the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and elsewhere, who have challenged the powerful NRA with surprising effectiveness. That says something important about the nature of modern leadership. We live at a time when the captains of business and government are being taken on by surging currents of social media-fed sentiment. If you have any doubts about that, ask Harvey Weinstein —who once ruled Hollywood but was toppled last year by the #MeToo movement, which is No. 3 on the Fortune list.

Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms have captured this change in their just-published book, New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World–and How to Make it Work For You. They argue that “old power”–top down, jealously guarded, held by the few–is giving way to “new power”–bottom-up, participatory, peer-driven. The future belongs to “those best able to channel the participatory energy of those around them–for the good, for the bad, and for the trivial.” Expect to hear more of this in the future.

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