“People who are treated as followers have the expectations of followers and act like followers. As followers, they have limited decision-making authority and little incentive to give the utmost of their intellect, energy, and passion. Those who take orders usually run at half speed, underutilizing their imagination and initiative.”
— L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!
Years ago, I was speaking with a frustrated entrepreneur:
“I keep hiring supposed senior developers, but nobody can take over what I do.”
He was trapped in a cycle that many leaders face. To break out of it, you have to ask yourself a fundamental question: How do you know if you’ve unlocked the full intellectual capacity of your organization?
Most managers answer with one of the following:
- I only hire A-players and A-players give their 100%.
- I ask them (Surveys, one-on-ones).
- I measure the rate of innovation and improvement.
- I let people own decisions and outcomes.
While A, B, and C are important components of a healthy business, I would argue that D is the only answer that matters.
The “Fixes”
When a leader feels their team is “running at half speed,” their first instinct is often to blame the talent pool (Option A). The entrepreneur I mentioned believed he had a hiring problem. He thought if he just found better senior developers, they would magically take charge. But he was hiring competent people and placing them in a system designed for compliance, not creativity. You can hire a genius, but if you treat them like a pair of hands, you will get a pair of hands.
Others try to solve the problem by asking for feedback (Option B). While engagement surveys are useful, happiness does not equal capacity. An employee can be perfectly content, paid well, and have a great work-life balance, while still leaving 40% of their intellect at the door because they aren’t challenged to solve difficult problems.
Many leaders turn to metrics (Option C). They try to measure innovation or output. You should be doing this anyway, but these are lagging indicators. By the time your innovation rate drops, the culture of “following orders” is already calcifying.
The Root Cause: The Permission Bottleneck
The reason that entrepreneur’s senior developers couldn’t “take over” wasn’t a lack of skill; it was a lack of ownership.
In a traditional management structure, the data lives at the bottom, but the ‘yes/no’ lives at the top. The senior developer spots a problem, reports it to the manager/CTO/founder, waits for a decision, and then executes.
In this environment, even an A-player learns that their job is to wait. They wait for validation. The bottleneck isn’t their talent; it’s your control.
The Cure: Decentralize Decision-Making
This brings us to Option D: Letting people own decisions and outcomes.
To unlock full intellectual capacity, you must stop delegating tasks and start delegating authority. True capacity is unleashed when you move the decision-making power to where the information lives, in the trenches.
When you allow a team member to own the decision, the dynamic shifts instantly. They are no longer executing your plan; they are executing their plan. The psychological/emotional weight of the outcome sits on their shoulders, not yours. This triggers the “intellect, energy, and passion” that Marquet speaks of.
If you are a leader wondering where your team’s brainpower is hiding, stop looking at your hiring pipeline or your survey results. Look at your decision-making structure.