Some people would rather be right than win

You hand one of your managers something to own and over the next few weeks, what comes back is a sequence that probably sounds familiar.

First: "I don't really know how to do that."

Then: "Honestly, you'd be faster at this - why don't you just take it."

So you help, you get it moving, and you say: great, now you finish it off.

To which they say, well, it's sort of your project now - you're the one who started it.

You hold the line.

Two weeks later you ask how it went.

The answer is: oh, I thought you had that one? You never sent a follow-up. We didn't really agree to it - it was more a comment in passing. I didn't take it as an actual instruction.

An owner I work with walked me through her version of this recently. The same dance, every time. It's a slow, polite machine for never being responsible for anything.

There's a name for the pattern: plausible deniability.

The careful manufacture of reasons that whatever didn't happen wasn't your fault. You didn't put it in writing, so technically it isn't real. You didn't ask in exactly the right way, so technically I'm off the hook.

The person running it is playing a small, private game of bureaucracy, and the only prize is getting to be technically correct.

This behaviour is normal, close to forgivable, in a frontline person.

They aren't paid to carry the organisation, they aren't promoted on their judgement, and their currency, reasonably enough, is being right. Plenty of frontline people would honestly rather be correct than win, and that's part of why they're frontline. There's not much harm in it.

A manager or a leader who would rather be right than win is a completely different problem. Because a leader whose first instinct, when something goes wrong, is to establish that it wasn't their fault will make sure you never win. They'll be technically correct the whole way down.

And the reason these people so rarely change is more interesting than simply "bad attitude."

Being right and winning sit at opposite ends of a gratification curve.

Being right is cheap and immediate - you can claim it today, out loud, in the meeting, at no cost.

Winning is expensive and slow.

It's repeated action and repeated discipline, the same unglamorous things done again and again, with a genuine chance of being wrong along the way and having to wear it. So winning takes enormous effort, and being right takes almost none. Which means only the people who can defer the payoff ever win. Anyone who needs the hit now will always reach for the version where they were right and everyone else put them in a position to fail. It pays out instantly and costs them nothing. It just happens to cost you a lot.

So when a leader starts talking in these circles, you don't take the bait, and you don't relitigate the technicality - that's the game, and it's unwinnable.

You bypass all of it and have one direct conversation. Once.

The version I use goes roughly like this:

I tell them “it feels like we're going round in circles, that I might be reading it wrong, so I'll extend the benefit of the doubt today - but I want one thing understood from here on. Your job as a manager is to make the organisation win. Not to be right. If you're standing on a technicality while the company loses, then either you don't understand the job - which is on me, because I haven't taught you - or you care more about being correct than about winning, which tells me I can't rely on you. I'm only going to say this once. After today, I'm simply going to watch the pattern: whether you keep bringing me reasons you were right, or you start bringing me ways we can win”.

I don't repeat it.

And the answer tends to sort itself out, because over a few months people show you plainly which one they are - and you're the one holding the power in that equation.

If you're deciding who to hand real authority to, figure out whether if the second they're blocked, they reach to be right - or to win.

Quick one before you log off for the weekend:

On Monday, I’m opening spots for an Agency Profit & Scale Accelerator cohort. Before it goes anywhere public, I want the people already reading this to get a head start.

It’s for agency owners doing $50K+ per month who have hit a ceiling and can't figure out why:

• You've plateaued for 6+ months, revenue feels stuck

• You are the bottleneck of the business: if you don’t do it, check on it, or save it, it doesn't get done

• You hired ahead of revenue and now your margins are compressed

• You're stuck in delivery, firefighting, making every decision

• You have data (maybe too much), but zero clue what to do with it

• Clients are "reasonably happy" but you're over-serving and undercharging

It's for you if you want to be lean, profitable and scalable inside six months.

I'm taking eight agencies. Far more people read this than there are seats, and the moment I open it up publicly, those seats start filling from a much wider pool.

The only real head start I can give anyone is time.

So if any part of you wants in, put your hand up below while it's in front of you.

One click and I’ll send you the details on Monday, before anyone outside this list sees them.

This is the last chance to join the waitlist.

Nick