There is a Yoruba proverb I have found increasingly useful as I have grown older:
Ẹni tó lórí kò ní fìlà; ẹni tó ní fìlà kò lórí.
Loosely: the person who has the head does not have the cap, while the person who has the cap does not have the head.
Life has an irritating habit of distributing its gifts unevenly.
I have sat across from C-suite executives presiding over vast commercial enterprises who did not understand concepts I considered elementary to their businesses.
I have encountered political leaders whose reasoning on certain subjects left me wondering how anyone with that level of responsibility could arrive at such a conclusion.
And there is a dangerous thought that can enter the mind of the technically competent person in those moments:
How can this man possibly be in charge?
The answer is uncomfortable.
He is in charge because competence and power are not the same currency.
Power Is Not an Examination Prize
We sometimes behave as though authority should naturally gravitate towards the most intelligent person in the room.
It does not.
People acquire power through many things: ownership, elections, inheritance, relationships, capital, courage, timing, charisma, political skill, coalition-building, institutional position and, sometimes, sheer good fortune.
Technical brilliance is merely one possible route.
You may understand the company better than the CEO.
He may still own 60 per cent of it.
You may understand public finance better than the governor.
He still won the election.
You may understand the transaction better than the chairman.
He still controls whether the transaction proceeds.
Wisdom begins with accepting reality before passing judgment on whether reality is fair.
This does not require worshipping power.
It requires seeing it accurately.
The Bible is remarkably unsentimental about this. Its kings are rarely presented as superhuman. Some are wise. Some foolish. Some courageous. Some vain. Some badly advised. Some morally compromised.
Yet until the throne changes hands, the king remains king.
That distinction matters.
The Seduction of Being Right
There is another version of this problem that I have experienced repeatedly in professional life.
A senior executive asks for advice.
You explain why a proposed course of action is likely to fail.
The executive disagrees.
The decision is made anyway.
Then events unfold almost exactly as you predicted.
Several months later, the same executive calls you.
There is now a crisis.
And he needs your help.
This is one of the most psychologically dangerous moments for an adviser because the words waiting behind your teeth are:
I told you so.
Resist them.
Power hates scorn.
The executive may already know you were right. Indeed, the fact that he has come back to you may be his acknowledgement of it.
But there is a difference between allowing someone to recognise that you were right and forcing him to kneel before your correctness.
One produces influence.
The other may produce resentment.
Sometimes the reward for giving good advice is not that power listens to you the first time.
Sometimes the reward is that when power discovers it was wrong, it remembers who can repair the damage.
That can be worth much more.
Do You Want Vindication or Influence?
Advisers can become addicted to being proved right.
We start waiting for the principal's mistake because his failure validates our intelligence.
At that point something has gone wrong.
The purpose of advice is no longer the success of the person or institution we advise. It has become the vindication of the adviser.
A good physician does not celebrate when the patient who ignored his advice becomes ill.
He treats him.
This does not mean pretending the previous advice was never given. There may be a time to revisit what happened, particularly if the same mistake could recur.
But sequencing matters.
First put out the fire. Then discuss why the building caught fire.
There is a form of power in being the person who can enter a crisis without needing to humiliate the person who created it.
People remember that.
The Cap May Know It Needs the Head
There is also something the technically competent often fail to understand about seemingly unimpressive leaders.
The powerful person may know what he does not know.
His skill may lie precisely in assembling people who know things he does not.
A chief executive does not personally need to be the company's best accountant, engineer, lawyer, salesman and technologist.
His value may lie somewhere else entirely: allocating capital, attracting people, managing shareholders, reading political currents, taking risk or making decisions under uncertainty.
The mistake therefore works both ways.
It is foolish for the ignorant executive to despise expertise.
It is equally foolish for the expert to assume that expertise in one domain entitles him to the throne.
Perhaps the person with the head needs the person with the cap.
And perhaps the person with the cap desperately needs the person with the head.
The relationship works when both understand what they possess.
Respect Reality Without Surrendering Judgment
This is particularly important as one gets closer to powerful people.
You will see flaws.
You will hear surprisingly poor ideas.
You may occasionally wonder whether people outside the room would still be as impressed if they heard what you just heard.
Do not let that knowledge turn into contempt.
Neither should you let the title switch off your own judgment.
The mature position is harder:
I recognise your authority without pretending you are infallible.
That is very different from sycophancy.
It is also different from arrogance.
There is a quiet discipline required to tell a powerful person the truth, allow him to reject it, remain available when the consequences arrive, and then help without enjoying his embarrassment.
Perhaps that is one of the first lessons in managing power.
The person wearing the cap may not have your head.
But he is still wearing the cap.
And if you understand power, your first task is not to resent that fact.
It is to understand what the fact requires of you.
Never mistake being smarter than power for being more powerful than power.