How to Identify and Fix “Permission Culture”
“The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work.”
-Agha Hasan Abedi
It has been a minute since I’ve been managed inside a hierarchical organization. I’ve never done particularly well with authority, but I’m also a rule follower and a gold star girlie. A bit of a “Type A hippie,” as my former (wonderful) manager Tina used to say. I thrive when I’m allowed to work autonomously with clear direction, and I can even enjoy sorting through a mess with a great team.
And still, after more than two years working for myself, the idea of going back to a corporate hierarchy makes me queasy.
Not because I’m anti-work or opposed to standards. It’s because I have frequently been on the receiving end of management that confused leadership with control. Once you’ve experienced the difference between respectful leadership and permission culture, it is hard to unsee and even harder to stomach.
Micromanagement isn’t a personality trait
Micromanagement is a set of practices people adopt because they work in the short term and they do not have better options. It creates predictability, reduces anxiety, lowers the risk of visible mistakes, and compensates for unclear standards and meandering decision paths. It also replaces the discomfort of coaching and feedback with overt control.
If you have ever said any of these things, you are not alone:
“I just need to make sure it’s right.”
“It’s faster if I do it myself.”
“They keep missing things, so I have to be involved.”
“If I don’t stay on top of it, it won’t get done.”
“I can’t trust them with this yet.”
Sometimes those statements are true in the moment, but often they are the byproduct of a culture you built accidentally.
Micromanagement is not random. It tends to show up when decision discipline is missing. When no one knows who decides what, how to define “good,” where to focus, or what is within bounds, the default is permission seeking. And once explicit leadership approval becomes the only operating system, everything slows down.
Signs you’re in a “permission culture”
Permission culture happens when “management” becomes synonymous with giving approval.
It can look like:
heavy review cycles to counteract unclear briefing
meandering decision lanes that result in constant escalation
subjective standards that keep the team guessing
feedback that ranges from absent to dramatic and punitive
regular meetings that provide false reassurance, without movement
Permission culture invites people to stop thinking. It trains them out of judgment. It signals that discernment is risky and compliance is safer. You do not commonly find initiative, innovation, or pride of craft from a culture that discourages autonomy.
Why leaders should care (even if morale seems fine)
Even if your team has learned to work with it, permission culture produces worse outcomes:
Bottlenecks and dependency loops
When decisions and approvals get trapped in too few lanes, “waiting for” becomes the default status. Meetings multiply to compensate. Managers become messengers instead of resourceful guides with solutions.
Quality and consistency problems
When standards are approximate, people optimize for not getting in trouble instead of optimizing for excellence. You get work that technically checks a box but doesn’t build trust and isn’t rewarding for your team to produce.
Innovation and initiative die quietly
People stop improving processes and stop speaking up. Not because they do not have ideas, but because they have learned those ideas are not welcome or are impossible to roll out.
Owner centralization and business fragility increase
Permission culture centralizes the business around a couple primary leaders. In small business, the owner often becomes the decision engine and the quality-control system. This makes the company brittle, raises succession risk, reduces transferability, and can take a real bite out of valuation because a buyer is not buying an owner’s brain. A buyer wants a business they can run.
So, what’s the antidote to micromanagement?
The opposite of micromanagement is not “hands off.” It’s not abdication. It’s not letting standards slide. It’s not pretending everyone will magically do great work without clarity.
The antidote to micromanagement is respectful leadership: high standards with clear constraints, trust built by design, and coaching in real time. It’s leadership that builds capacity instead of control. Here, managers function as resources for their team, not authorities to control them.
In practice, that means the manager’s job is to create clarity and constraints, develop judgment, and coach in real time, so the team can own outcomes without waiting for permission.
How to start implementing change
Like micromanagement, respectful leadership is not a personality trait. It’s learned (and practiced) behavior, coupled with a commitment to treating people well.
If you want to train your team, start with 4–6 learned behaviors and reinforce them consistently:
Decision lanes: who decides, who weighs in, who gets notified, what triggers escalation
Coverage plans: time off handled like logistics, not permission
Fast feedback: fast, specific, low-drama course correction in the flow of work
Coaching skills: constructive conversations that develop people through work
Standard sets: define “good” so people can hit it
SOP support: tools for autonomy, not control
Why this matters to Good Apple
We care about entrepreneurship because we care about jobs. Real ones. The kind where someone can get excellent at their craft and still be treated like an autonomous adult.
Not every role is flexible. Not every day is fun. Some work is repetitive and demanding. And still, people should not be managed within an inch of sanity as the price of earning a living.
Work does not have to suck.
We can build better systems. Managers can be trained to become resources. And when that happens, you get what every owner says they want: stronger performance, better outcomes, healthier teams, and a business that does not require the owner to be the center of everything forever.
Want help getting started?
Our Permission Culture Triage Guide can help your team identify the highest-leverage focus area and build a lightweight plan to reinforce it.
