How to Claim Authority Without Going Rogue

Employees should act independently, but not recklessly

A few years back, not long after I committed to giving more authority to my employees, I got an unpleasant surprise. A key employee stepped up and asked for a chance to operate at a higher level — music to my ears! I promptly handed him full ownership of a major new initiative, and told him: “Here’s your big chance. Dazzle me.” He was thrilled, and I felt like I was empowering my employees to succeed and grow without helicoptering over them.

There was just one problem: the employee didn’t succeed. Worse still, over the next several months it emerged that he’d actively concealed his failure, and managed to hide how bad things were getting until the situation was virtually unsalvageable. He resigned in shame, and my team had to work hard to get the project back on rails. 

The episode presented an object lesson for me. I learned the hard way that when you give authority, you also have to put guard-rails in place and check in to prevent overzealous employees from driving the car off a cliff with everybody in it.

Rewarding the Rule Breakers

But it speaks to a broader problem: in Silicon Valley, we tell employees that we want them to be pirates — swashbuckling innovators who disrupt the status quo, break rules, and get the job done. In fact, there’s a strong sense at many tech companies that people who politely ask for permission are simply signaling that they aren’t ready to take charge. We’ve trained a generation of tech workers who see ambition and success as sides of the same coin, and who want to ‘move fast and break things’ to prove their worth and win themselves a seat at the table. 

That isn’t necessarily a bad approach to running a company, and it certainly makes Silicon Valley an interesting place to work. At many successful companies, there’s an internal market for talent and authority: people with skills and energy find ways to exert greater impact simply by picking up more of the load, without waiting for permission or a formal change in their official duties. If they do well, their stock increases, and they’re more likely to be handed bigger projects in future — or to find themselves able to simply claim ownership of such projects without anyone questioning their right to do so.

Reining in the Rule Breakers

Still, as I found to my cost, a laissez-faire approach to authority can easily backfire, with bosses at risk of being blindsided by workers who go rogue -- people who take initiative without also taking responsibility for their actions. As companies move out of the startup phase, and founders begin granting decision rights to more junior employees, that can have serious consequences and become a real constraint on sustainable growth. 

To avoid that situation, we need to ensure that our employees understand exactly what’s required when it comes to claiming authority and acting independently. That doesn’t mean going back to a stifling command-and-control model, with a leader allocating work and drone-like employees rigidly following orders. But it does mean teaching our teams that even pirates need discipline, team spirit, and a degree of accountability to keep their boat moving in the right direction.

It’s telling, for instance, that Apple, the company where the innovators-as-pirates trope was born, keeps its employees on a famously tight leash. Employees do get opportunities to experiment and break things, but typically only within relatively narrow domains. You won’t see many Apple engineers giving free-wheeling, improvised speeches at conferences, for instance, and even internally much of the company’s R&D is compartmentalized and handled on a need-to-know basis. Engineers can still step up and use their initiative, but there are clear rules and norms that govern when and how they can do so. 

Claiming Authority and Accountability

Not every company needs to go that far. Generally, smaller companies can achieve great results simply by fostering a more collaborative and accountable approach to giving and claiming authority. Clearly, we want employees to keep showing initiative, being self-starters, and getting the job done without waiting for permission. But we also need to make clear that there’s a world of difference between claiming authority and going rogue. The best employees don’t just strike out on their own — they take responsibility for managing upwards, and ensuring their bosses have a clear sense of what’s going on, with regular updates and opportunities to intervene if things start to veer off-course.

That’s especially important at high-growth tech startups, where many leaders lack the time, the attention span, or the process discipline to give all their employees the direction they need. In such situations, the real MVP isn’t the employee who simply has an idea and executes it — it’s the employee who also goes the extra mile by enrolling their boss, communicating clear targets and deadlines, notes on potential risks or bottlenecks, and specific action items or requests for input and advice.

Acting with Autonomy and Transparency

The best employees understand that claiming authority isn’t about flying solo — it’s about stepping up and harnessing the power of the team, without waiting for someone to tell you exactly what’s needed of you at any given moment. That requires not just autonomy, but also an ability to hold yourself accountable and to proactively seek guidance from your boss.

That doesn’t mean asking permission, and it certainly doesn’t mean failing to act because you’re worried about transgressing some imagined or self-imposed boundary. But it does mean understanding that to claim authority effectively, you have to be open and transparent about what you’re doing and to act in ways that are good for the team and the company as a whole. Get that right, and you’ll find that your value as an employee will soar — and that you’ll be given far greater opportunities to shine than if you’d simply tried to go it alone.