Is it time for more command and control leadership in an uncertain business world?

By Mark O’Neil | Kinetic Mentoring™

There is a point in a leadership meeting when another opinion adds very little, but another week of delay costs rather a lot. The options have been explored, the concerns have been heard and the commercial consequences are becoming clearer. Yet the decision remains open because somebody would like more reassurance, another conversation or a stronger sense that everyone agrees.

For a founder carrying the responsibility for the business, that can become deeply frustrating. People want to be involved, but involvement does not always bring a willingness to take responsibility for the outcome. Meanwhile, the business still needs a direction, customers still need answers and opportunities do not remain available indefinitely.

It raises a question worth taking seriously. Has the emphasis on consultation, inclusion and hearing every voice made some businesses less capable of deciding, precisely when clear leadership matters most? Would a more directive approach serve them better?

My view is that there is a strong case for greater decisiveness and clearer authority. There is also a considerable danger in using uncertainty to justify taking every decision back to the top. Founders need to be more deliberate about the decisions they own, while expecting their senior teams to carry more responsibility for the decisions that belong with them.

The commercial cost of keeping everything open

Consultation has a cost that rarely appears explicitly in the management accounts. It consumes time, delays investment and leaves people working around priorities that have never quite been settled. A business can be extremely busy while its most important choices remain unresolved.

Consider a company debating whether to concentrate on its most profitable customer group or continue pursuing a broader market. Sales wants flexibility, operations wants consistency and finance wants stronger margins. Each perspective is legitimate. The founder’s responsibility is to resolve the competing demands and make a commercial choice, rather than keep the strategy sufficiently vague for every function to interpret it differently.

Leaving that choice open also makes a decision, although usually without acknowledging it. Resources remain spread, exceptions multiply and the business carries the consequences of a direction nobody has properly owned.

Seeking further views can sometimes become a respectable way of avoiding this responsibility. A leader who fears being wrong can keep gathering opinions long after those opinions have stopped improving the judgement. Consultation offers temporary protection from the discomfort of choosing, while transferring the cost of delay to the business.

There is a similar problem when inclusion is interpreted as an entitlement to agreement. People deserve a fair hearing, particularly where they hold relevant knowledge or will carry the consequences. That does not give every participant a veto, nor does it require the leader to produce a decision everyone would have made themselves.

When a more directive approach earns its place

There are circumstances where a leader must narrow the discussion and give clear instructions. A serious cash shortfall, a major operational failure or an immediate threat to customers requires an identifiable person to establish priorities and direct the response. A prolonged debate about preferences can make the situation worse.

Even outside a crisis, businesses benefit from a founder who can settle difficult trade-offs. Choosing where to invest, deciding which activities to stop and addressing a senior colleague’s persistent underperformance all require judgement that cannot be replaced by collecting more views.

A directive approach can also restore confidence after a period of drift. People who have endured changing priorities often welcome a leader who explains the choice, acknowledges its consequences and gives them a stable basis for action. Clarity can be reassuring even when the decision itself is unpopular.

The strength of this approach depends on the leader’s judgement and the quality of the information reaching them. Authority can bring a discussion to a conclusion, but it cannot make a weak assumption sound. Nor should a temporary need for tighter control become the permanent justification for approving everything personally.

A leader taking greater control during a difficult period should be clear about its scope and when it will be reviewed. Otherwise, the crisis may pass while the habits of dependency remain.

The risk of losing the voices that matter

The strongest objection to command and control is that a growing business contains more knowledge than its founder can hold. The person closest to a customer, a delivery problem or an emerging technical issue may understand something the leadership team has yet to see.

A founder who becomes impatient with challenge can cut themselves off from that knowledge. People learn which answers are welcome, concerns are softened before they travel upwards and meetings become demonstrations of agreement. Decisions may appear faster because the evidence against them is no longer being presented.

That is a particularly dangerous form of confidence. The leader believes the business is aligned, while the team privately adjusts for decisions it does not trust. By the time a problem reaches the top, the opportunity to deal with it cheaply may have gone.

Amy Edmondson’s 1999 study of 51 work teams found an association between psychological safety and team learning behaviour. The research concerned people’s ability to take interpersonal risks, including speaking up, within a team. It supports taking the conditions for candour seriously, although it does not establish that every decision should involve everyone or await consensus.[1]

The practical question for a founder is whether the people around them can say that the plan is flawed, the forecast is optimistic or the promised delivery date is unrealistic. A team that can do so gives its leader a stronger basis for deciding. The founder still has to weigh the evidence and accept responsibility for the choice.

How much psychological safety should a senior leader need?

This deserves a more demanding discussion than it sometimes receives. Leaders of substantial businesses should be expected to withstand challenge, carry uncertainty and disappoint people when the commercial decision requires it. Their role comes with scrutiny, and they cannot reasonably expect every interaction to leave them comfortable or affirmed.

A founder who needs the senior team to protect their feelings will struggle to obtain honest advice. Colleagues start managing the leader’s reactions alongside managing the business, which is an expensive use of capable people. Being challenged on a proposal is part of the job, and the leader should be able to explain their judgement without treating disagreement as disloyalty.

However, I would challenge the idea that senior leaders therefore have no need for psychological safety. A chief executive must be able to admit that an assumption was wrong, disclose a developing problem to the board or ask for help before the consequences become serious. A culture that humiliates leaders for those admissions encourages concealment at exactly the level where concealment can do the most damage.

The standard should combine candour with rigorous accountability. A leader can be expected to explain a poor decision, repair its consequences and demonstrate what they have learnt, while remaining able to disclose it honestly. Psychological safety cannot reasonably promise protection from scrutiny or from the consequences of persistent poor performance.

The same discipline applies to the senior leadership team. They need room to question the founder, acknowledge mistakes and raise concerns early. They also need to arrive prepared, make recommendations and own delivery. Psychological safety becomes commercially useful when it allows people to face difficult realities together, rather than making those realities easier to avoid.

For leaders who find the phrase psychological safety unhelpful, I would suggest framing it as “confidence to speak candidly”. It is a practical way of expressing the underlying principle, with a clear expectation that people will question assumptions, admit mistakes and raise concerns without being humiliated for doing so. The leader’s responsibility is to make that candour possible and respond to it fairly, while the team’s responsibility is to use it constructively and accept accountability for their work. This language may sit more comfortably around a boardroom table because it connects directly to the quality of the information on which decisions depend.

Consultation needs a decision owner and an end point

The answer to excessive consultation is to give it a clearer purpose. Before seeking views, the leader should establish the decision being made, who owns it and when it must be settled. Contributors can then focus on the evidence and consequences that will improve that particular choice.

A discussion about entering a new market needs a commercial assessment, delivery implications and a view of the resources at risk. It does not necessarily need everybody’s general opinion about expansion. Relevant expertise should carry more weight than the confidence with which somebody speaks.

The leader should also explain how the discussion will conclude. Some choices belong to the founder, some to the board and others to a member of the senior team. Making that clear avoids the familiar situation where everyone participates but nobody knows who has the authority to close the matter.

Jeff Bezos used the phrase “disagree and commit” in his 2016 letter to Amazon shareholders. Significantly, he described committing to a team’s decision despite his own reservations, as well as seeking commitment from others.[2]

That is a useful discipline for founders. A senior colleague may make a defensible decision that differs from the founder’s preference. Giving that colleague authority requires allowing the decision to stand within the agreed boundaries. Otherwise, delegation remains conditional on choosing what the founder would have chosen.

Commitment should still leave room to raise material new evidence. A deteriorating position, a serious risk or an invalidated assumption deserves attention, even after the discussion has closed. Repeatedly reopening a settled choice because someone remains unhappy is a different matter.

A stronger team should strengthen decisions at the top

Getting the team to step up does not weaken the founder’s authority. It changes how that authority is exercised and creates more capacity for the decisions that genuinely require it.

In a growing business, the founder should be spending sufficient time on strategic direction, major commitments of capital and the leadership capability needed for the next stage. Those responsibilities are easily crowded out when routine commercial and operational decisions continue to arrive at their desk.

Peter Drucker wrote in 1967: “Effective executives do not make a great many decisions. They concentrate on what is important.”[3]

For a founder, the challenge is to decide which matters deserve their personal attention and then build the conditions for other people to carry the rest. A senior team cannot develop much judgement while every meaningful choice is referred upwards or quietly reversed afterwards.

Delegation needs substance. An operations director needs clarity about the outcomes expected, the resources available and the matters requiring escalation. A commercial director needs to understand the margin requirements and the authority they hold over pricing exceptions. The founder then has a basis for assessing their judgement and results.

Asking the team to step up while leaving these boundaries vague is unfair and ineffective. Equally, a senior manager who has clear authority should be expected to bring a recommendation, explain the risks and make the decisions within their remit. Constantly asking the founder to choose can become another form of avoiding responsibility.

Decisiveness includes the capacity to change your mind

An uncertain environment makes it unlikely that every decision can be made with complete information. Leaders need to distinguish between a choice that can be tested and adjusted, and a commitment whose consequences will be difficult to reverse.

Marcus Aurelius expressed this principle in his Meditations: “Remember that to change your course and to follow some one who puts you right is not to be less free.”[4] For a founder, there is a useful lesson here about authority. Listening to a well-founded challenge and revising a decision remains an exercise of your own judgement. The responsibility stays with you, while the contribution of others helps you discharge it more effectively. A leader secure in their authority should be able to accept correction without feeling diminished by it.

A limited trial of a new service can provide useful evidence without exposing the entire business. A major acquisition or a fundamental change to the operating model deserves more extensive examination. Using the same process for both either slows ordinary progress or exposes the business to poorly understood risk.

Changing direction after receiving material new evidence can demonstrate sound judgement. The leader should explain what has changed, which assumption no longer holds and what the business will now do. People are more likely to trust an adjustment they can understand than a confident insistence on continuing with a failing plan.

Constant changes driven by the latest opinion are another matter. They leave the team unsure whether a decision will survive the next conversation. Clear direction needs enough stability for people to execute, alongside an agreed way of recognising when the evidence justifies a review.

The leadership I believe this moment requires

I believe many businesses would benefit from firmer leadership. Founders should be prepared to close discussions, resolve competing priorities and make choices that some colleagues will dislike. Seeking everyone’s approval is an unreliable basis for running a business, especially when the cost of delay is rising.

A wholesale return to command and control would create problems of its own. It would concentrate too much judgement in one person, discourage useful challenge and make the business more dependent on the founder at a stage when it needs greater leadership capacity.

My work with founders when the decisions get heavy centres on helping them carry their proper responsibility with greater clarity. That includes examining the issue, testing the assumptions and recognising where a difficult choice is being postponed. It also includes deciding where the founder should retain authority and where the team must take ownership.

Commercial performance improves when decision quality improves. More voices can contribute to that quality when they bring relevant evidence and honest challenge. They create delay when the process has no clear owner, no boundary and no point at which discussion becomes action.

The founder’s task is to establish direction, make the decisions that belong at the top and expect capable people to exercise judgement within it. A stronger senior team should leave the founder better able to lead, with more time and attention for the choices that determine the future of the business. That is the combination of decisiveness and responsibility I believe an uncertain world requires.

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About the Author

Mark O’Neil is a strategic business mentor working with founders, CEOs and leadership teams as businesses grow and the decisions become heavier. His work focuses on strategic clarity, decision quality, leadership ownership and execution.

References

[1] Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. Read the research.

[2] Bezos, J. (2016 shareholder letter, published 2017). 2016 Letter to Shareholders. Amazon. Read the letter.

[3] Drucker, P. F. (1967). The Effective Decision. Harvard Business Review, January. Read the article.

[4] Marcus Aurelius. Meditations, VIII.16. Translated by A. S. L. Farquharson (1944). Read the source text.