Borrowed Authority and Control: The Failure Mode of Affiliation-Based Confidence

People often fail to question individuals who present themselves as being associated with circles of power, even when that association cannot be independently verified. Proximity is mistaken for credibility, and affiliation is treated as evidence of competence. This happens because some people construct identity and confidence through affiliation with power. That confidence is imagined. It does not hold when competence must be measured on the individual alone, without borrowed authority.

When uncertainty appears, these same individuals tend to reach for control instead of investing in the people sitting in front of them. Control feels like risk reduction. It is not, by the data. There are countless examples of PE-backed technology companies that tightened controls, hollowed out culture, and quietly failed years later. They failed precisely because they substituted rigid control for investment in people and judgment, rather than building real capability. Durable execution comes from capable people operating within structure designed to amplify judgment, not from structure imposed to compensate for its absence.

This behavior has clear leading indicators. One of them is tone. A strong warning sign is a sense of entitlement to not being challenged. That mindset assumes proximity to invisible, unverifiable power confers authority. When questioned, offense is taken, and others rush to defend the mythology. What forms is a closed loop of status, ego, and manufactured self-importance, detached from reality once pressure arrives.

Control from the top does not resolve uncertainty in innovation or in the unknown. It displaces uncertainty, pushes it out of sight, and allows it to accumulate until failure is sudden and catastrophic. Progress comes from trusting capable people, letting judgment surface over long periods of uncertainty, and having the stomach to ride that volatility without flinching. Competence is built by leaning into the problem and putting more wind behind capable people to carry through the storm, not by attempting to compress uncertainty into rigid, top-down control. Social status, proximity to power, and posturing should not be mistaken for effectiveness. Assertiveness is not competence; it is often incompetence masked by the illusion of certainty through control.