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Leadership
How systems – and you – can fight back against omnipotent leaders
Systems crack – from mass mobilization and quiet refusal to non-compliance, pressure finds its way in.
Omnipotent leaders rise by dismantling constraints, suppressing dissent, and demanding unwavering loyalty. They appear untouchable – until they aren’t. As Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg explains in her I by IMD article Three ways to deal with the almighty boss, omnipotent leaders believe they are beyond ethical and institutional constraints. They thrive on an inflated sense of self-importance, moral licensing, and the conviction that their mission justifies all means.
This logic also plays out in authoritarian regimes, where leaders centralize control and eliminate checks and balances, consolidate decision-making, silence dissent, and manipulate governance structures to serve their own ends. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue in How Democracies Die that modern autocrats do not destroy democracy overnight but dismantle it piece by piece, bending institutions until they serve only them.
And yet history is rich with examples of seemingly untouchable leaders (and regimes) who ultimately fell, undone by a convergence of forces that eroded their authority. The very tactics used to consolidate control sow the seeds of its collapse.
Power does not reside in a person alone but in the structures of obedience and legitimacy that sustain them.
Power does not reside in a person alone but in the structures of obedience and legitimacy that sustain them. The perception of invincibility often precedes the most dramatic falls. Consider Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania, who went from giving a speech to execution in just four days in 1989, or Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, who transitioned from celebrated visionary worth $4.5bn to convicted fraudster in just a few years.
Leaders who eliminate dissent drive subversion from within when alienated, insiders rebel. Those who demand personal loyalty over institutional commitment invite mass resistance when the gap between rhetoric and reality becomes too wide to ignore. By centralizing control, they create brittle systems vulnerable to external pressure. And when their power relies on compliance, they collapse when individuals quietly refuse to cooperate.
Cracking the system
Unchecked leaders fall when internal divisions, cultural shifts, and external scrutiny converge. You don’t have to be Mahatma Gandhi to challenge a system – sometimes, all it takes is spotting the right crack and having the courage to act.
Courage is often quiet, unexpected – and contagious. Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz warned the Danes about the German’s intended deportation of Jews in 1943, helping 7,000 escape deportation. Ezell Blair Jr, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond sparked the Greensboro sit-ins in 1960, igniting the Civil Rights Movement. Azucena Villaflor, in 1977, defied Argentina’s dictatorship by demanding answers for the disappearance of her son. Harald Jäger opened the Berlin Wall gates in 1989, hastening the regime’s fall. Johnny Clegg, in 1985, used music to challenge apartheid censorship.
The same is true in a corporate setting. Alyssa Milano’s 2017 tweet reignited Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement, exposing systemic abuse. Sherron Watkins exposed Enron’s fraud in 2001, triggering its downfall. Thomas Perkins resigned from Hewlett-Packard’s board in 2005 over unethical surveillance, forcing leadership changes. Susan Fowler, in 2017, revealed Uber’s toxic work culture, leading to the resignation of CEO Travis Kalanick and systemic reforms. These individuals proved that power erodes when the right person acts at the right moment.
Systemic resistance isn’t about individual heroism but strategic positioning. It’s about understanding that while systems shape individual behavior, individuals can also influence systems, especially at key leverage points through incremental actions that accumulate over time.
The illusion of omnipotent power relies on controlling the narrative. The system begins to crumble when alternative stories emerge, revealing leader weaknesses or showcasing possibilities for change. This resistance has a multiplier effect – each act of defiance creates openings for others to recognize their own power and join in. Once courage becomes visible, collective power becomes possible.
The power of omnipotent leaders erodes in different ways.
How omnipotent leaders and regimes fall
Once the conditions for resistance emerge, how does it manifest? Four core mechanisms appear repeatedly: mass mobilization, elite fractures, external pressure, and strategic non-compliance.
The power of omnipotent leaders erodes in different ways:
- Mass mobilization happens when people collectively withdraw consent, shifting the balance of legitimacy.
- Elite fractures appear when those in power turn on their own.
- External pressure forces change from the outside, leveraging market forces, global politics, or institutional investors.
- Strategic non-compliance is the slow, deliberate withholding of cooperation that erodes authority from within.
Mass mobilization: the power of collective defiance
Hannah Arendt’s influential 1970 book On Violence suggested that collective power is greater than force. When people mobilize, they shift the balance of legitimacy away from the leader.
History provides striking examples of mass mobilization as the catalyst for regime collapse. When Gandhi marched 240 miles to make salt in 1930, he ignited a movement that the British could not suppress, demonstrating the power of collective defiance. The American Civil Rights Movement began with four students at a Woolworth’s lunch counter, yet within months, their sit-in protests had transformed segregation laws. In 2011, millions of Egyptians occupied Tahrir Square, forcing the military to abandon President Hosni Mubarak after 30 years in power.
Corporations are not immune. In 2018, 20,000 Google employees across 50 offices staged a walkout to protest the company’s handling of sexual harassment cases, forcing an overhaul of policies on workplace conduct. The same year, #MeToo testimonies against CBS CEO Les Moonves accumulated until even the most powerful stakeholders could no longer ignore them. Public silence shattered, and he resigned.
These movements reveal a crucial truth: resistance has a tipping point. While starting collective action requires courage, joining an existing movement demands only solidarity. The Google walkout began with seven employees but grew to 20,000 when others saw they weren’t alone. This cascade effect, where each new participant lowers the threshold for others, transforms isolated dissent into systemic challenge. As Marshall Ganz observed, courage isn’t just individual – it’s relational and spreads through communities.
Susan Fowler, a site reliability engineer at Uber, exposed the company’s toxic work culture via a 2017 blog post.
Elite fractures: when insiders rebel
Machiavelli warned 500 years ago in The Prince that unchecked power breeds internal dissent – leaders who alienate their inner circles invite collapse from within.
Hitler’s downfall accelerated in 1944 when Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, once a loyal officer, attempted an assassination, revealing just how deeply Hitler’s paranoia and mismanagement had alienated his inner circle. The Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 was not the work of mass protests alone; it was a moment of institutional disobedience, as high-ranking officials refused to implement coup orders. Without the machinery of compliance, the system fell apart.
For example, in corporate environments, Hewlett-Packard was thrown into turmoil in 2005 when a board member resigned in protest over unethical surveillance, triggering an unraveling of governance that forced out the leadership. Four years earlier, when Enron’s Sherron Watkins internally documented fraudulent accounting, her memo was the spark that led to the corporation’s downfall.
Susan Fowler, a site reliability engineer at Uber, exposed the company’s toxic work culture via a 2017 blog post. Her revelations led to the resignation of CEO Travis Kalanick and forced Uber to overhaul its policies on harassment and workplace accountability.
External pressure: the weight of market and global forces
John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1689) argues that people have the right to seek alliances when domestic resistance is impossible. Even the most entrenched regimes and businesses cannot operate in isolation. External forces, from economic sanctions to regulatory investigations, can create the conditions for collapse.
In 2019, activist investor Engine No. 1, despite holding only a fraction of ExxonMobil’s shares, placed three directors on the board by rallying institutional investors around climate concerns, forcing a strategic shift the company’s leadership had resisted for years. In 2016, when the Wells Fargo fake accounts scandal erupted, it was not internal ethics alone that led to executive resignations. The weight of regulatory scrutiny and congressional hearings made resistance futile.
History shows that even entrenched regimes fall under global scrutiny. South Africa’s apartheid system was weakened by international sanctions, corporate divestment, and diplomatic isolation, ultimately forcing a transition. In Chile, Pinochet clung to power, but external economic pressure, an organized expat opposition, and a lost referendum signaled the beginning of the end.
In the 2020 Wirecard collapse, the company under CEO Markus Braun intimidated journalists and brushed off accounting concerns. However, a persistent investigation by the Financial Times, combined with whistleblowers and short sellers, exposed a €1.9bn accounting fraud. Braun went from celebrated fintech pioneer to criminal defendant.
After the 2008 financial crisis, Deutsche Bank experienced what became known as “quiet quitting” – employees withholding discretionary effort, disengaging, and taking their expertise elsewhere.
Strategic non-compliance: resistance from within
According to Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), totalitarian regimes depend on bureaucratic obedience. Passive resistance, quiet sabotage, and institutional non-cooperation can dismantle power from within. Power structures can also crumble through the slow, subtle erosion of strategic non-compliance.
Nazi Germany learned this firsthand when Danish civil servants, rather than openly defying occupation, systematically delayed anti-Jewish measures. In 1980s Poland, underground publishing networks kept independent journalism alive, ensuring that the Communist government’s grip on information was never absolute, and in apartheid South Africa, black workers engaged in a subtle but powerful form of resistance through deliberate slowdowns and ‘work-to-rule’ tactics.
After the 2008 financial crisis, Deutsche Bank experienced what became known as “quiet quitting” – employees withholding discretionary effort, disengaging, and taking their expertise elsewhere. This passive resistance contributed to the bank’s declining market position. In another form of resistance, Walmart store managers, frustrated with top-down directives, practiced “malicious compliance” by executing policies to the letter in ways that exposed their flaws, forcing leadership to rethink strategy. In Boeing’s 737 MAX crisis, engineers who raised safety concerns were silenced, but their warnings gained credibility as accidents occurred. CEO Dennis Muilenburg was forced to testify before Congress and was dismissed in 2019.
Leveraging these interfaces is where power systems are most vulnerable and where individual actions can have outsized effects.
Individual agency in systemic resistance
As the above examples have shown, systemic resistance can begin with individual actors making strategic choices. By identifying structural vulnerabilities, the foundation for effective resistance is created. Building informal networks can strengthen your collective power to drive an exponential impact. Individuals in key positions can leverage their specific placement within a system. A middle manager who refuses to implement a questionable directive, a compliance officer who documents patterns of misconduct, or a board member who asks pointed questions are all using positional advantage.
Individuals are often positioned at the interface between institutions – where a company meets regulators, where an organization meets the press, and where internal departments connect. Leveraging these interfaces is where power systems are most vulnerable and where individual actions can have outsized effects.
History teaches one consistent lesson: power is only as strong as the system that upholds it. Resistance happens at the intersection of strategic courage and systemic vulnerability. As Leonard Cohen reminds us in his song Anthem: “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.“
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