Nobody at the helm: The illusion of managerial control

We always like to believe that a large complex organization or group of people (such as a large public corporation or even a country) is led by a leader, and we especially love to imagine a powerful and skillful leader, but in reality, a large organization is kind of led by nobody in particular.

There is hardly anybody at the helm. Occasionally there is somebody at the helm for a limited time to a limited degree, but mostly no particular person is at the helm, and the ship is drifting.

The ship may for a limited time drift very approximately in the direction that the last person at the helm intended. With some luck, it may even arrive at one of the islands in the desired group of islands. Very rarely, it may even arrive at exactly the desired island, but for that, spectacular luck is required.

The leader of a large complex group of people is ultimately doomed. Nearly always. It is only a matter of time until he or she ends up approximately like Napoléon Bonaparte or some similar fate in principle.

Leadership of a large group of people produces only an illusion of control. A large group is mindbogglingly complex, wily/slippery, and impossibly difficult to control to a satisfactory degree for a satisfactory length of time.

Don’t believe me? Then talk to a few high-level executives with sufficiently long experience, and they will tell you: Yes, leadership is fraught with the illusion of managerial control.

It is also known as the paradox of control in organizations. Sooner or later, the leader inevitably discovers that he/she must somehow live with the uncomfortable paradox of being simultaneously in control and not in control.

The U.S. psychologist Ellen Langer named the illusion of control and defined it as the tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control events. Inexperienced leaders initially believe that the illusion is real. They see themselves as responsible for a profitable event even though there is little or no causal link between their actions and the profitable event.

Being in a position of power is known to strengthen the illusion of control. After some time, the eventual disillusionment occurs, and the leader must admit that his/her control was only an illusion.

The illusion of control also occurs in non-leadership situations such as financial trading in stockmarkets. The illusion is strengthened by stressful and competitive situations.

A laboratory demonstration of the illusion of control is performed as follows. A control booth is equipped with two buttons and two lights labelled “Score” and “No Score”. Each test subject / human lab-rat is instructed to attempt to learn how to use the buttons to control the lights with the aim of maximizing the number of times that the “Score” light is illuminated.

After pressing the buttons for some time, each test subject is asked to estimate how much control they had over the lights. Their stated estimates are usually related to how often the “Score” light is illuminated.

The buttons actually have no effect on the lights at all. Despite the fact that these people have no control at all, they confidently report exerting at least some degree of control over the lights.

In a variation of the experiment, the buttons are programmed to have a small degree of partial control over the lights. Again, the human lab-rats are asked to estimate how much control they have. They usually overestimate it. They report having much more control than they do in reality.

The same thing happens in leadership roles in large complex organizations. Initially the leader and the employees believe that the leader is in control of the organization. Eventually, if they are observant and honest, they must admit that the leader had little control over the events that occurred.

The illusion of control is a known defect in the human brain. It needs to be taken into consideration when making decisions and plans.

For example, a leader might attempt to compensate for his/her unsatisfactory level of control by launching several projects in parallel at the same time with acceptance of the fact that he/she cannot control which one will succeed and which will fail.