Sabotage Pattern #11: Punish Anyone Trying to Steal Control from You
Imagine someone approaches you with an idea and wants to run an experiment. Perhaps he wants to decide something. Never allow that. This person is certainly trying to steal control from you. The only way you can ensure high productivity is by keeping things firmly under your control. And if anyone comes and wants to decide something, never mind how marginal it might be, don’t allow that.
This has two very nice effects. The first one is that you have become a central decision-making point for everything. And thus the decision making process inevitably slows down — there are simply too many decisions to be made. If someone above you questions this, use the “I know it may slow things down a little, but I need to be aware of what is going in my teams, otherwise the employees wouldn’t do what we want them to do and they’d just slack off”. That will do the trick and you will also reaffirm the command&control mindset within the organization and slow the decision making processes even further, as this may “inspire” other managers.
The second side effect is that you will undoubtedly start making some really bad decisions. This of course wouldn’t be your fault at all — simply, some of the crucial information necessary to do those decisions haven’t been available to you. This is also a good excuse in case your superiors start questioning you — just blame the people on the team for not providing you with all the adequate information. Moreover, you may use this to actually appoint “chiefs” or “leads” within your teams, so that there is a clear responsibility to push the relevant information up the management chain.
In the end, this leads to making wrong decisions, disempowering the people doing the work and tightening the command&control mindset (which we know does not work in any creative environment).
Recognition
- Does it happen that your superiors won’t let you make any decisions?
- Do your superiors try to check and validate all the decisions you’ve made, regardless of whether they actually have the knowledge or information?
- Do you want your team members to ask for permission before they do anything?
- Are you afraid of people not doing what they are supposed to do without you micromanaging them?
Removal
- If you are a team member trapped in this situation, there is not much you can do. You can start using other sabotage techniques to point at the absurdity of what is going on. If you are brave enough, you may suggest your managers to create a delegation board or a ladder of leadership, clearly stating who makes what kind of decisions; in the process of making this board you will have the opportunity to explain to him that some decisions should be made at the team level, where all the necessary information for making them resides. Or you can start looking for a new job.
- If you are a manager, suggest the same — delegation boards go a long way in empowering and subsequently emancipating the teams, which should be your ultimate goal.
