What Input Should Non-Owners Have?

The short answer to that question is “a lot” but it needs to be filtered carefully and not automatically followed. If we changed the question just a little and asked if “some” of those non-principals can lead you effectively, the answer is certainly “yes”. But input is not the same as control.

This is an important question because turning to your leadership team to evaluate your plans, or even to come up with those plans with them together, is the default for most small independent firms. Going to an outside advisor, first, is easily viewed as a slap in the face to the people who’ve been serving with you in the trenches and know what’s really happening.

Input vs. Control

There’s a distinction, here, around who has input and who has control over your firm’s future. I think that should be you, as the owner, and you alone. It’s your name on the bank notes and ultimately your reputation that’s on the line.

But how do you make those decisions? Any big decision should take your leaders’ opinions into account, but no big decision should depend on a democratic vote.

This question comes up in every New Business Audit or Total Business Reset: “who should participate in our phone calls?” My answer is always this: “If it’s just you on the call, and we make a lot of progress, who would you immediately go bounce our tentative conclusions off? Okay, just have that person on the call with us.”

There are two reasons, though, and they aren’t related. The first reason is to start the clock on change. We all need to poke and prod ideas around the edges, raise objections, try it on for size, test it against reality, and so on. It’s fair to give all these leaders the same time you need to process an idea about significant change.

But the second reason is to give each of those people a chance to influence the decision, and here’s where input vs. control comes in. Some of your leaders can step outside their own self-interest and think about what’s best for the organization, and some of those leaders cannot. If you leave a positioning decision to a democratic vote, it would nearly always end up being a watered down one. If you require a unanimous decision, well, good luck with that.

The Unconscious Conspiracy

For fifty years, now, we’ve known that some of your very own leaders are the ones most resistant to change. It’s hard for them to get out of their own ruts, especially if any serious change might undermine their own role in the firm. This is a conspiracy (against change), but it’s not a conscious one. Instead, it’s a very human one that we should all be able to relate to.

This concept was first popularized in a 1976 book by Walter Bennis. Here’s Claude’s summary:

The core idea is that leaders face an "unconscious conspiracy afoot, aiming to sabotage your plans and undermine your vision." This isn't a deliberate plot by malicious actors, but rather a confluence of organizational dynamics that unintentionally blocks leadership effectiveness.

The main components of this unconscious conspiracy include:

• Entrenched bureaucracy - Rigid hierarchies, excessive rules, and established procedures that resist change and innovation
• Mind-numbing routine - The gravitational pull of day-to-day operations that keeps leaders trapped in tactical rather than strategic thinking
• Social and organizational trends - Broader cultural forces that make transformative leadership difficult

What makes this a "conspiracy" is that these forces work together, often without anyone consciously orchestrating them, to maintain the status quo. Managers get pulled into administrative details, crisis management, and routine tasks that consume their time and energy, preventing them from exercising genuine leadership vision.

Ring a bell, anybody?

Countering the Conspiracy

Here’s how I’d suggest you counter the conspiracy at your firm, especially now during a time when firms desperately need to be reinvented.

1. It’s not conscious. Don’t assume bad intent by your team. There might be some, but that needs to be dealt with on an individual basis, with patience, and ultimately with a dismissal if warranted. But the team as a whole is not dead set to keep your firm from thriving.
2. Understand the incentives, and the main incentive here is to keep a steady job. Whether your firm grows or whether you personally make more money or whether you take the right risks to improve service offering design, and on and on, matter to an employee, but not nearly as much as collecting a steady paycheck into the indefinite future, scaling and innovation be damned.
3. Put a different filter around every person’s insight. Certain ones have consistently given you great feedback, even at considerable personal risk. Or they’ve made suggestions that may not be in their own interest but are best for the firm.
4. Finally, check your own immunity to good ideas. There are certain signals that never seem to break through our own preferences, and the key is to be aware of them.

Our constant solving of the same challenges just needs to stop. Any powerful idea is likely to face significant resistance from your leadership team, especially at first. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Doesn’t mean it’s right, either.