The Illusion of Control
What Happens When No One Actually Leads
By Ryan Gartrell
It’s easy to spot a failing company in the rearview mirror.
The balance sheet tells part of the story. So do the layoffs, the strategy pivots, the quiet resignations. But by the time those signs surface, the deeper damage has already been done.
What’s harder to see—but far more dangerous—is the slow erosion of leadership. The kind that happens when no one is truly in charge, but everyone thinks they are. When authority is blurred, decisions are delayed, and titles mean everything except responsibility.
I’ve lived through this inside a client organization. I watched a leadership team collapse not because of a hostile takeover, a public scandal, or market pressure—but because no one was really leading.
Here’s how that played out—and what every founder, CEO, and operator should learn from it.
The Program Manager Who Became a CEO
When we were first brought in, the company had just hired a new CEO. He had been a program manager at a large industrial firm. Thoughtful. Credentialed. Completely out of his depth.
He had a small team around him—an operations manager, a personal assistant, and a handful of trainers who handled the real work. His job, theoretically, was to focus on growth, efficiency, and long-term vision.
Instead, he focused on everything.
He got involved in email templates. Training scripts. Calendar logistics. Minor design choices. He buried himself in detail not out of necessity, but out of fear. Every decision had to pass through him. Every system bottlenecked at his desk.
His operations manager mirrored the behavior. She saw herself not as a partner to the CEO but as a multi-role fixer. She declared herself CFO one week, then marketing lead the next. Meanwhile, her actual responsibilities suffered.
And the assistant—equally unchecked—began to act as the CEO’s gatekeeper and de facto voice. People adjusted to her tone because they assumed she spoke with his blessing. Often, she did.
What we observed was not just dysfunction. It was performative leadership—authority without accountability.
The Culture of Control
In environments like this, dysfunction becomes culture.
No one owns anything fully because everyone touches everything.
The assistant speaks for the CEO.
The ops manager makes marketing decisions.
The CEO spends more time managing personalities than managing the business.
And as a result, no one is responsible for outcomes.
The team was demoralized. Pay structures were misaligned. Deadlines slipped without consequence. Our firm was brought in to solve “marketing and growth,” but the real issue wasn’t branding.
It was clarity.
The Pushback and the Exit
We outlined the problem. Candidly. Respectfully. Directly.
It wasn’t well received.
We were dismissed—politely but abruptly.
Sixty days later, the CEO stepped down. Quietly. He admitted, in the end, that the role was too big. The board allowed him to exit with dignity.
In his place, they promoted one of the trainers—a steady, capable person who had never held a leadership role at that scale. And that promotion came with baggage: the same ops manager, now more entrenched, and the same structures that had already failed once.
The assistant quit early. The ops manager stayed.
The Second Chance
The new CEO brought us back.
He saw the problems clearly. He just wasn’t sure how to fix them without rocking the boat. He didn’t want to lose the ops manager, despite the cost of keeping her.
She continued to operate as a one-person department store—handling too many things, poorly. She didn’t delegate, didn’t build systems, didn’t trust anyone else to own key functions. And while she believed she was saving the company money, she was costing them performance, morale, and future growth.
The new CEO saw it. He still does. But like many first-time leaders, he fears instability more than he fears dysfunction.
That’s how organizational drift begins: not with a bad call, but with the avoidance of a necessary one.
The Illusion of Control
When everyone touches everything, no one owns anything.
When no one owns anything, nothing gets better.
This is the illusion of control: a workplace where titles are big, communication is constant, and actual leadership is missing.
Companies don’t die because of one person. They die from accumulated avoidance—good people making bad decisions because no one will name the real issue.
What This Teaches Us
- Being busy is not the same as being essential.
The ops manager’s workload was enormous. The value was minimal. Busyness concealed underperformance. - Authority without clarity is chaos.
When people speak on behalf of others without guardrails, they rewrite culture in real time. - Avoiding confrontation doesn’t preserve harmony.
It breeds quiet resentment, blurred roles, and missed opportunity. - Leadership doesn’t mean doing more. It means deciding better.
A good CEO focuses on the business. A bad one focuses on being liked, needed, or everywhere.
Final Word
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s common.
We want to believe the systems we inherit will carry us forward. But often, they’re the very thing holding us back.
Whether you’re in over your head or surrounded by someone who is—there is a way out. It starts with naming the problem. Then confronting it. Then rebuilding, deliberately, with systems that don’t rely on heroics or control.
That’s what I do at RyanGartrell.com.
That’s what we reinforce with Lean AI®—clarity, accountability, delegation, and real leadership at scale.
Because if no one is actually leading, the company isn’t actually moving.
It’s just treading water. And eventually, that always runs out.
—
Ryan Gartrell
Consultant. Operator. Quiet Fixer.
ryangartrell.com | angryshrimpmedia.com
