Non-Direct Authority Positions

Why Non-Direct Authority Positions Should Never Run Operations

Here’s the deal. This one might sound petty at first, but it has cost real companies real money, and I have watched it play out over and over across our industry. Support positions, people development, legal, training, scheduling, BIM, technology, exist to serve operations. They do not get to tell operations what to do, no matter how good their intentions are, because they are not accountable for the outcome.

That distinction sounds simple. In practice, it gets violated constantly, and every single time it happens, the results are predictable and bad.

A Story Worth Telling, Because It Ended Well

We have a philosophy at Elevate that we want to hire people for life, meaning we want a genuine cultural fit, someone who drives results and lives our core values, and we want to be part of that person’s life for as long as they want to stay. That is different from hiring anyone at all just to fill a seat. If someone is not culturally aligned or not performing, we cannot keep employing people that way and still stay in business.

One of the tools we use is what we call the Keeper Test. Ask a direct supervisor a simple question. If this person told you today they had a better offer somewhere else, would you fight to keep them? The honest answer tells you a lot.

There was a person on our operations team who was genuinely a good person, but who consistently struggled to get work done, tended to place responsibility on the team rather than take it on themselves, and did not improve despite real coaching. We coached, trained, and invested in this person seriously. Eventually, the direct line supervisor gave an honest answer: I care about this person, I hope they land somewhere great, but I would not fight for them, because nothing we do from a coaching standpoint moves the needle.

Then someone from our people development team, who was not in the direct line of operational authority, said they would fight for this person. I pushed back hard in that moment, and it got a little tense. I am glad it did, because pushback means people are engaged and alive in the conversation, not just going along.

The Fix That Made the Principle Click

Here is how we resolved it, and I think this is the part worth remembering. I said, if you genuinely want to fight for this person, then they move to your team. You own the relationship, you own the coaching, and you own the outcome. You do not get to tell operations to keep someone operations has already determined is not working out, while you carry none of the accountability for that decision.

The room paused, and then people development got it immediately. You cannot fight for somebody and then hand them back to the people who already said the fit was not working, effectively passing a defect down the line to someone else to deal with. I genuinely respect that team for pushing back on me in the first place and then hearing the principle once it was laid out clearly. That is exactly the kind of healthy conflict a real team needs to have.

Why This Keeps Happening Everywhere

I have watched this exact pattern repeat across construction companies more times than I can count. A support department, legal, technology, training, scheduling, tells operations what to do, and it never works out well. Not occasionally. Every single time.

The reason traces back to incentives, not intentions. A support position that is not accountable for the operational result is incentivized to feel important, to feel needed, to look good enough to keep their own job secure. In theory they might also be incentivized to create flow, benefit the people actually doing the work, and genuinely listen. In practice, that second set of incentives rarely wins out, because it is not what determines whether their own position feels secure. Because they are not accountable, it is not their decision, and pretending otherwise sets up a structure that runs on the wrong incentives from the start.

Watch for these signs a non-authority position has started making decisions that belong to operations:

• A department outside the direct chain of command issuing direction rather than support or recommendations
• Decisions being made by someone with no experience actually doing the operational work being directed
• Operational leaders quietly following direction they privately disagree with because it came from a department rather than their own chain

What a Real Line of Authority Looks Like

I grew up at Hensel Phelps, a company that was genuinely strict about this. The path ran field engineer, project engineer, assistant superintendent, then either project manager or superintendent, and up through the chain of command from there. Every single person in that chain, all the way to the executive vice president, the president, and the CEO, was accountable for the results their decisions produced. Departments like technology, pre-construction, and training existed in a support role, subservient to operations, precisely because they were not in that direct, accountable chain.

That structure is not about ego or hierarchy for its own sake. It is about matching decision making authority to actual accountability. When operations is staffed with people who know the work, are being properly trained, and are held accountable for results, and you place a trainer, a scheduler, a BIM specialist, or any support role in charge of directing a superintendent or field director, you are asking for trouble. The decisions that follow will not be grounded in field experience, will not carry real accountability, and will not consistently reflect what operations actually needs. They will instead be shaped by a very human, very understandable drive to feel significant and in control, even when that is not the intention going in.

Respecting People Means Respecting the System They Work Inside

This connects to something I believe deeply about human nature. The human brain did not evolve to handle influence and incentive structures cleanly. Put people into a system where they can direct outcomes they are not accountable for, and something in most of us will eventually reach for control or significance, even with the best of intentions. That is not a character flaw specific to any one department or person. It is a predictable feature of how incentive structures shape behavior, and the fix is structural, not moral.

Respect for people, something the Japanese Lean tradition gets right, means designing systems that do not put good people in a position where their incentives quietly work against the outcome everyone actually wants. A support role given authority it is not accountable for is not a favor to that person. It is a setup that eventually damages both the support function’s credibility and operations’ ability to actually run the project.

Building This Boundary Into Your Own Organization

None of this is about diminishing support functions. Legal, training, scheduling, and people development are genuinely necessary and valuable. The principle is narrower than it sounds: authority to direct operational decisions has to sit with people who are accountable for the operational results, full stop.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your organization build a clean line of authority where support functions genuinely support operations instead of quietly directing it. Getting this boundary right protects both the credibility of your support teams and the ability of your field leaders to actually run their projects.

So here is the challenge. Look at your own organization and ask where a support function might currently be directing operational decisions rather than advising on them. If you find one, do not just correct the direction. Ask the support team the same question I asked people development. If you believe this strongly enough to override operations, are you willing to own the outcome yourself? That question tends to clarify things fast.

Jason Schroeder said it plainly: “Because they’re not accountable, it’s not their decision.” Keep authority and accountability matched, and this problem mostly takes care of itself.

On we go.

FAQ

How do you tell the difference between a support function advising operations and one that is actually directing it?
Advising looks like a recommendation operations is free to accept, modify, or decline based on field judgment. Directing looks like operations being told what to do with the expectation of compliance, regardless of field experience or accountability for the outcome. The clearest test is whether the operational leader retains the final call and the accountability that comes with it, or whether that authority has quietly shifted to the support function.

What should happen if a support team genuinely believes operations is making the wrong call?
They should raise the concern directly and make their case, the same way anyone should be able to voice disagreement inside a healthy team. What should not happen is the support function overriding the operational decision without taking on the accountability for the outcome. If they feel strongly enough to want control over the decision, the honest resolution is for them to take ownership of that piece of work directly, the way people development took ownership of the employee in this story.

Why does this pattern show up so consistently across different companies and industries?
Because the underlying incentive structure is the same everywhere it happens. A position that is not accountable for operational results but is given influence over them tends to use that influence to feel important or secure in their own role, even without any bad intent. That incentive dynamic is a predictable feature of how humans respond to authority without accountability, not a flaw unique to any particular company or department.