Point Lookout: a free weekly publication of Chaco Canyon Consulting
Volume 21, Issue 37;   September 15, 2021: Illusory Management: II

Illusory Management: II

by

Many believe that managers control organizational performance more precisely than they actually do. This illusion might arise, in part, from a mechanism that causes leaders and the people they lead to tend to misattribute organizational success.
18 hats

18 hats. A useful metaphor for transference, due to Virginia Satir, is hanging one person's hat on the head of another. [Brenner 2001.1] Image based on one by TiceRuck, courtesy .

Organizational leaders certainly influence organizational performance. They control or have significant influence over resource allocation, the organizational roster, and organizational strategy. But as noted last time there is much that they do not control. So much, in fact, that we must question the stories we tell ourselves about the degree of control Management actually has.

And the question I find most intriguing is this: How does the story of management control persist? Said differently, given the obvious limitations of Management control, why do we continue to believe in it as strongly as we do? Three phenomena suggest an explanation. They are a cognitive bias called the Illusion of Control, the effect of power on one's tendency to succumb to the illusion of control, and psychological transference.

The illusion of control: a cognitive bias

The illusion of control is a cognitive bias that causes us to overestimate the degree of control we have over events. [Thompson 1999] In extreme examples, people believe that they influence events over which their influence is clearly insignificant. For example, there are those who believe that when they watch on television the games of their favorite professional sports team, the team is more likely to win.

The illusionThree phenomena suggest an explanation for
the persistence of our belief in Management
control: The Illusion of control;
Transference; and Power
of control appears with somewhat more plausible justification when we're personally involved in events. For example, when a project is a smashing success, achieving all its objectives within its projected time and budget, the project manager might feel responsible for the success. Indeed, that feeling might be justified to some degree. However, the illusion of control could cause that project manager to overestimate that degree of responsibility. Almost certainly, a significant portion of the responsibility for success is due to the work of the project team, the resources provided by the organization, and in one example, to the predecessor project manager who conceived the project plan and executed it for the first 22 months of its 28-month duration, until she was quarantined and hospitalized with COVID-19.

When we welcome an outcome in which we're personally involved, we're more likely to succumb to the illusion of control.

Transference

Transference is a phenomenon that causes us to transfer feelings we have for one person or entity onto another usually distinct and unrelated person or entity. It was first identified in the context of psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud, who noticed that many of his clients had developed strong feelings for him. But transference has the potential to appear in any human relationship. In particular, transference can affect how the people of an organization perceive their leaders. [Maccoby 2004]

Because organizational leaders are authoritative and powerful, some people, some of the time, perceive organizational leaders as, for example, parents or teachers. When this happens, they attribute to organizational leaders feelings, abilities, power, and authority beyond what those leaders actually possess.

Most important, some people attribute to organizational leaders a sense of caring that leads to feeling an obligation to look after the welfare of the people of the organization, beyond what many leaders actually feel. For instance, organizational leaders might terminate the employment of people in their organizations much more readily than parents might eject their own child from their home.

Transference and the illusion of control can conspire to distort our perceptions of Management's ability to control the performance of the organization. Because of transference, some people in the organization tend to adopt a view that cuts two ways. Whether the organization is faring well or poorly, its people tend to attribute success or failure too much to management activity. This happens because they overestimate the importance of the organization's wellbeing in Management's decision-making process.

That overestimate is due, in part, to transference and the indirect action of the illusion of control. Because of transference, people overestimate the importance to Management of organizational wellbeing. And because they believe that Management cares about the organization's people as parents would care about their children, they believe that Management always does everything possible to ensure organizational success.

Power and the illusion of control

A 2009 paper by Fast, Gruenfeld, Sivanathan, and Galinsky reports the results of four experiments investigating how the experience of power affects one's susceptibility to the illusion of control. [Fast 2009] They found that the effects of experiencing power include elevated incidence of the illusion of control. The illusion of control can be so strong that people who experience power also experience an elevated sense of their own ability to control time. [Weick 2010].

These effects are important when we consider what happens when organizational leaders perceive that the people of the organization believe that the leaders have more control over organizational performance than they actually do. If that mismatch between perception and reality were to occur, organizational leaders would have a rather jarring experience. They might feel that they were being held responsible for outcomes beyond their control.

But because the power experience engenders the illusion of control, the perceptions of organizational leaders tend to align with the perceptions of those they lead. In this way, the effects of power on leaders' perceptions of their own degree of organizational control restores stability to what might otherwise be an unstable dynamic.

Last words

The illusion of control, transference, and power thus combine to defend the story of management control of organizational outcomes. That defense is often effective enough to enable belief in the story to persist despite strong evidence suggesting other explanations for organizational performance. First in this series  Go to top Top  Next issue: Formulaic Utterances: I  Next Issue

101 Tips for Managing ChangeIs your organization embroiled in Change? Are you managing a change effort that faces rampant cynicism, passive non-cooperation, or maybe even outright revolt? Read 101 Tips for Managing Change to learn how to survive, how to plan and how to execute change efforts to inspire real, passionate support. Order Now!

Footnotes

Comprehensive list of all citations from all editions of Point Lookout
[Brenner 2001.1]
Richard Brenner. "You Remind Me of Helen Hunt," Point Lookout blog, June 6, 2001. Available here. Back
[Thompson 1999]
Suzanne C. Thompson. "Illusions of Control: How We Overestimate Our Personal Influence", Current Directions in Psychological Science 8:6, (1999), 187-190. Back
[Maccoby 2004]
Michael Maccoby. "Why people follow the leader: the power of transference," Harvard Business Review 82:9 (2004), 76-85. Available here. Retrieved 31 August 2021. Back
[Fast 2009]
Nathanael J. Fast, Deborah H. Gruenfeld, Niro Sivanathan, and Adam D. Galinsky. "Illusory control: A generative force behind power's far-reaching effects," Psychological Science 20:4 (2009), 502-508. Available here. Retrieved 31 August 2021. Back
[Weick 2010]
Mario Weick and Ana Guinote. "How long will it take? Power biases time predictions," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46:4 (2010), 595-604. Available here. Retrieved 31 August 2021. Back

Your comments are welcome

Would you like to see your comments posted here? rbrendPtoGuFOkTSMQOzxner@ChacEgGqaylUnkmwIkkwoCanyon.comSend me your comments by email, or by Web form.

About Point Lookout

This article in its entirety was written by a 
          human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.

Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.

Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.

Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.

Related articles

More articles on Cognitive Biases at Work:

Brendan Nyhan and Jason ReiflerHistorical Debates at Work
One obstacle to high performance in teams is the historical debate — arguing about who said what and when, or who agreed to what and when. Here are suggestions for ending and preventing historical debates.
Louis Pasteur in 1885Wishful Significance: II
When we're beset by seemingly unresolvable problems, we sometimes conclude that "wishful thinking" was the cause. Wishful thinking can result from errors in assessing the significance of our observations. Here's a second group of causes of erroneous assessment of significance.
An actual bandwagon in a circus paradeCognitive Biases and Influence: I
The techniques of influence include inadvertent — and not-so-inadvertent — uses of cognitive biases. They are one way we lead each other to accept or decide things that rationality cannot support.
Unripe grapes that are probably sourMotivated Reasoning
When we prefer a certain outcome of a decision process, we risk falling into a pattern of motivated reasoning. That can cause us to gather data and construct arguments that erroneously lead to the outcome we prefer, often outside our awareness. And it can happen even when the outcome we prefer is known to threaten our safety and security.
Children playing a computer gameThe Risk of Astonishing Success
When we experience success, we're more likely to develop overconfidence. And when the success is so extreme as to induce astonishment, we become even more vulnerable to overconfidence. It's a real risk of success that must be managed.

See also Cognitive Biases at Work and Critical Thinking at Work for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

A meeting in a typical conference roomComing April 3: Recapping Factioned Meetings
A factioned meeting is one in which participants identify more closely with their factions, rather than with the meeting as a whole. Agreements reached in such meetings are at risk of instability as participants maneuver for advantage after the meeting. Available here and by RSS on April 3.
Franz Halder, German general and the chief of staff of the Army High Command (OKH) in Nazi Germany from 1938 until September 1942And on April 10: Managing Dunning-Kruger Risk
A cognitive bias called the Dunning-Kruger Effect can create risk for organizational missions that require expertise beyond the range of knowledge and experience of decision-makers. They might misjudge the organization's capacity to execute the mission successfully. They might even be unaware of the risk of so misjudging. Available here and by RSS on April 10.

Coaching services

I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrendPtoGuFOkTSMQOzxner@ChacEgGqaylUnkmwIkkwoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.

Get the ebook!

Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:

Reprinting this article

Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info

Follow Rick

Send email or subscribe to one of my newsletters Follow me at LinkedIn Follow me at X, or share a post Subscribe to RSS feeds Subscribe to RSS feeds
The message of Point Lookout is unique. Help get the message out. Please donate to help keep Point Lookout available for free to everyone.
Technical Debt for Policymakers BlogMy blog, Technical Debt for Policymakers, offers resources, insights, and conversations of interest to policymakers who are concerned with managing technical debt within their organizations. Get the millstone of technical debt off the neck of your organization!
Go For It: Sometimes It's Easier If You RunBad boss, long commute, troubling ethical questions, hateful colleague? Learn what we can do when we love the work but not the job.
303 Tips for Virtual and Global TeamsLearn how to make your virtual global team sing.
101 Tips for Managing ChangeAre you managing a change effort that faces rampant cynicism, passive non-cooperation, or maybe even outright revolt?
101 Tips for Effective MeetingsLearn how to make meetings more productive — and more rare.
Exchange your "personal trade secrets" — the tips, tricks and techniques that make you an ace — with other aces, anonymously. Visit the Library of Personal Trade Secrets.
If your teams don't yet consistently achieve state-of-the-art teamwork, check out this catalog. Help is just a few clicks/taps away!
Ebooks, booklets and tip books on project management, conflict, writing email, effective meetings and more.