Great Idea, Your "Majesty"
How to be a Subversive Manager under Autocratic Leadership
This is the first in an 8-part series on how to be a subversive manager under different leadership styles. The styles are loosely based on work from Lewin through to Burns, and Bass. If you want the theory, go read them. If you want to survive working under those styles, that’s what this is for.
Autocratic leadership is the purest form of top-down management. The person at the top is the monarch. What they say goes. No debate. No nuance. No inconvenient input from the people actually doing the work.
Decisions are made unilaterally. Control is maintained tightly. Obedience is expected. There may be the occasional nod to “open discussion”, but it’s largely ceremonial. You’re welcome to contribute, as long as you agree.
It’s efficient. In the same way a hammer is efficient.
And yes, you can still be a subversive manager in this environment.
Your first job is to create a safe micro-environment for your team. A small pocket of sanity in an otherwise tightly controlled system. You become the buffer. The translator. The shock absorber.
Directives come down. You interpret them. You soften them. You turn blunt instructions into something workable. You shield your team where you can, and you make sure your own activities don’t attract attention from above.
Because if you get attention, there will be intervention.
And intervention rarely improves things.
You’ll also need to master a particular rhythm:
Fail quietly.
Experiment quietly.
Take risks quietly.
Succeed LOUDLY.
And when you succeed, make sure it’s very clear whose vision made it possible. Theirs, of course. Always theirs.
That’s the game.
Autocratic systems run on narrative. Use it. Frame everything upward in the language of leadership’s goals and values. You don’t need to agree with them. You just need to use them. After all, they chose the rules.
From your perspective, this will be stressful. You’re managing two systems at once. The official one, and the one that actually works.
It helps to reframe it as a game.
It’s you and your team operating inside constraints, working out how to do good work without triggering the system that would stop you from doing it.
And within your span of control, you can still lead properly.
Create trust. Encourage initiative. Celebrate wins. Build a culture that feels nothing like the one above it.
Because your team doesn’t report to the organisation, they report to you.
And if you’re doing this properly, they’ll know exactly whose side you’re on.
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