Executives Who Control Everything Doom Themselves to Distrust Others

In my work I interact with many business leaders — sometimes chatting about business as friends, sometimes collaborating as work partners, and sometimes working under a dependent relationship where one side is the client and the other the contractor.

Talking across these various patterns the other day, something suddenly struck me.

I think it’s fair to call it a patterned pitfall.

About “executives who want to control everything”

Executives who want to control everything generally share these traits:

• They want to interfere down to the smallest details of on-the-ground work
• They can’t feel at ease unless they grasp and control everything themselves
• The executive himself is exceptionally capable at business

The negative outputs commonly cited are things like:

• The people on the ground lose motivation
• Nothing moves forward without the president’s decision, so speed suffers
• Employees never grow no matter how much time passes
• The organization fails to scale

It’s a negative cycle, plain and simple.

Sorting through this cycle, I realized there’s a mental characteristic likely to emerge, one I have to call unfortunate.

The executive brings the miserable belief “you can’t rely on other people” upon himself, through his own actions.

Say, for example, he gains a capable subordinate.

An executive of this type is very capable himself.

At first he gives that capable subordinate’s knowledge and experience a fair evaluation. “You’re excellent,” he says.

But as the relationship continues, the executive absorbs various things and starts forming his own opinions even in the subordinate’s area of expertise.

Another person is, in the end, another person. There’s no way their opinions will stay aligned forever.

So the moment the subordinate’s opinion and the executive’s opinion begin to diverge, he declares, “Something’s off with this guy,” “So this is as far as he goes.”

Say a very inexperienced young employee joins.

At first, the executive thinks “this one will need training for a while” and watches over them with appropriate care.

After a year or two, he thinks “they should be fine now” and hands them heavy responsibilities.

Naturally, some cases can’t be handled easily with only a year or two of experience.

“My mistake. It was too soon,” he judges, reasonably enough.

And so the interference begins.

He gives instructions on this and that, the project moves forward, and mistakes and trouble decrease — but in the process he robs them of the chance to fail, succeed, and struggle. Naturally, they don’t grow.

Then, a year or two later, he declares, “They’re not growing at all,” “Still at this level,” “Talent development really doesn’t pay off after all (I’m the president — a high-cost resource — and I stayed right by their side teaching them everything, too).”

Both cases are self-inflicted wounds.

The former arises because he doesn’t accept differing opinions or perspectives.

The latter arises because his method of developing people is wrong.

Depending on who’s on the other end, though, these can sometimes “look like they succeeded.”

For instance, he might end up with a capable yes-man who picks up on everything the executive intends.

Such a person skillfully lays out reasons to affirm whatever the executive is thinking, hides away anything that might contradict it, and maintains a pleasant relationship. They serve as a capable pawn, working themselves to the bone, obediently reading the room.

But is a person like this really a plus for the company?

Or, rare but real, he might end up with people who claw their way back up even if you throw them into a valley a thousand fathoms deep.

They overcome any unreasonable demand and keep producing results, gasping for breath the whole way.

But unreasonable demands tend to escalate over time.

How long can a person like that really hold out?

In the end, both patterns arrive at a negative outcome.

And once again he thinks: “So this is as far as it goes, after all.”

Managing is an extremely common task, shared not just by executives but by managers and team leaders as well.

Simply misunderstanding what “management” means can create an irreversible situation whose effects echo over the mid to long term. That’s worth keeping firmly in mind.

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2022/08/903/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.