When Leaders Don’t Understand the Work, Decisions Become Dangerous
I always doubted it and never thought it was real but there is a quiet problem in many Technical and Engineering Organizations.
It doesn’t show up in strategy documents.
It doesn’t appear on dashboards.
And it rarely gets discussed honestly in boardrooms.
That problem is this:
– Decisions are being made at the top by people who have never stood at the bottom.
Not because they don’t care.
But because they’ve never been close enough to understand what the work actually demands.
I Didn’t Always See This Clearly
When I first entered the Ship Repair / Ship Building environment as a Project Engineer, later a Project Manager, I thought I understood productivity.
Every morning, I walked across the floating dock on my way to the vessel for the daily project meeting. And every morning, I saw the same thing – A group of workers responsible for scraping marine growth off the hull standing around.
From my perspective, it looked like inefficiency.
It looked like poor discipline.
It looked like wasted time.
And I reacted the way many young managers do.
- I Shouted.
- I Scolded.
- I Questioned Their Work Ethic.
I had meetings to attend. Schedules to protect. Targets to meet.
Until one day, I did something different.
The Day I Put on the Overalls
I cancelled the morning meeting.
Instead, I put on a one-piece overall, picked up a scraper, and joined them.
The work was done by hand. Mechanical scraping. No automation. No shortcuts.
Within minutes, I understood why they were standing still.
The Physical Strain.
The Repetitive Motion.
The Fatigue in The Arms and Shoulders.
The Heat.
The Awkward Posture.
The Reality that you Cannot Scrape Continuously Without Burning Out Your Body.
At one point, I called a timeout.
And I apologised.
Not because the work disappeared overnight, but because my understanding had been wrong.
I realised that what I had interpreted as laziness was actually recovery. What I saw as inefficiency was survival.
- As From That Day I Changed How I Lead.
Why This Happens at Senior Levels
As people rise into senior management, executive, or director roles, something subtle happens.
They Gain Authority.
They Gain Distance.
They Lose Physical Contact With the Work.
Over time, productivity becomes a Number.
Efficiency becomes a Percentage.
Delays become a Failure of Discipline.
But the Body Never appears in the Spreadsheet.
The Posture Never appears in the Schedule.
The Confined Space Never appears in the KPI.
The Confined Space Lesson
Later in my career, as a project manager, I ran another experiment.
I climbed down into a double bottom tank.
I wanted to understand what welders were dealing with in confined spaces. Limited movement. Poor ventilation. Awkward positions. Heat. Restricted visibility.
Only after doing that did I truly understand:
- Why welding in those spaces takes longer,
- Why fatigue sets in faster,
- Why productivity curves flatten,
- Why scheduling assumptions often fail.
From the Office, Welding is Welding.
From Inside the Tank, it is a Different Reality Entirely.
That Experience reshaped how I Planned Work, Negotiated Timelines, and Defended Teams against Unrealistic Expectations.
The Broader Problem
This issue is not unique to shipyards.
It exists across:
- Heavy Engineering,
- Mining,
- Energy,
- Manufacturing,
- Logistics,
- Offshore Oil & Gas,
- Infrastructure Projects.
Senior leaders often speak about:
- “Lack of Productivity,”
- “Inefficiency,”
- “People Standing Around,”
- “Poor Execution.”
But they rarely ask the deeper question:
– What does the work actually require from the human body, mind, and environment?
Why Technical Reality Gets Ignored
Most Executives were never trained to read operational reality.
They were trained to:
- Read Reports,
- Manage Financials,
- Interpret Trends, and to…
- Make Decisions under Abstraction.
That Skillset is Valuable, But Incomplete.
I wholeheartedly believe that without grounding in the physical world of work, leadership decisions drift away from reality.
Targets become Fantasies.
Schedules become Optimistic Narratives.
Pressure replaces Understanding.
The Consequence: A Broken Feedback Loop
When leaders don’t understand the work:
- Criticism Flows Downward,
- Explanations Never Flow Upward, and…
- Resentment Builds Quietly.
Blue-Collar workers feel judged by people who have never done the job.
White-Collar managers feel trapped between reality and expectation.
Executives feel blindsided when projects fail.
- Everyone Loses.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
Because today’s organizations are more complex than ever.
Safety margins are tighter.
Quality requirements are stricter.
Regulation is heavier.
Labour is more constrained.
The margin for ignorance is shrinking.
Leadership without understanding is no longer just Inefficient, it’s Risky.
This Is Not About Blame
Neither is this an argument that executives should “know everything.”
It is an argument that leaders must respect what they do not know.
That respect shows up in:
- Spending time on the floor,
- Asking before judging,
- Listening before correcting, and…
- Understanding before demanding.
The best leaders I’ve worked with were not the smartest people in the room, they were the Most Curious.
A Message to White-Collar Leaders
If you manage technical people, ask yourself:
- When last did I physically experience the work I’m judging?
- Do I understand the constraints, or just the output?
- Am I measuring performance, or endurance?
- Have I replaced understanding with pressure?
Strategy built without reality is not strategy.
It’s Imagination.
A Message to Blue-Collar Workers
- Your experience matters.
- Your knowledge is not inferior because it isn’t academic.
- Your insight is not resistance.
- Your hesitation is often wisdom earned the hard way.
Good Leadership Listens.
Poor Leadership Dismisses.
Final Reflection
Maybe it’s time for White Collars to think like Blue Collars.
Maybe it’s time for Boardrooms to Understand Bolts, Sweat, Posture, Fatigue, and Space.
Because when decisions are made far from the work, they don’t just miss nuance, they miss truth.
And leadership built on misunderstanding will always struggle to deliver results that last.
Please note:
I don’t think for one second that my account is a definitive account.
I offer it no more than an opening round in a conversation that I hope
End
When it comes to technical organizations, it is rightfully said in this that the executives and top leaders must understand the practical part of the industry. Papers cannot do scrapping, papers cannot enter confined spaces but a leader that went through it will understand and all decisions making will be correct based on the true reflection of the task to be performed.
The suggestion that leadership should “respect what they do not know” is crucial. No leader can know everything, but they can show respect for the knowledge that exists at every level of an organization. This not only leads to better decision-making but also helps build trust, reduce frustration, and prevent unnecessary conflict between different tiers of employees. Leaders who take the time to connect with their teams on the ground will not only improve productivity but also cultivate a work environment based on trust, respect, and shared understanding. Sadly, the disconnect is the first nail in the coffin for many organizations whose focus is on the money and not the people.
Leeanne, I always had and still have great admiration for your expressed opinions coupled with wisdom.
Thought-provoking topic.
In my view, risky decisions often stem not just from a lack of technical understanding, but from misalignment—leaders on the right bus, in the wrong seat. Putting the wrong person in a role virtually guarantees poor choices and unintended outcomes.
Management and leadership are distinct, yet both require a clear grasp of operational realities. Executives don’t need to know everything, but the more they understand their sector’s workflows and constraints, the better their decisions will be for the company, clients, and stakeholders. I have seen and experienced many white collars and executives thar has no to little experience about productivity and labour norms, yet they have much to say about efficiency and performance measurement, measuring and reporting “KPI” that has no bearing or makes no sense to “what matters most”.
True leaders influence, guide, and support—and their decisions are followed because they’ve earned trust. That starts with respecting the knowledge and wisdom of colleagues and frontline experts.
A quick example: my daughter studied a successful Thai company and was struck by the owner’s humility and discipline. The owner routinely empowered the person with the right expertise to lead a task, while she and the rest of the team provided support. The results were consistently successful.
Bottom line: align roles to strengths, pair leadership with operational literacy, and elevate the people closest to the work. That’s how decisions become sound—and sustainable.
WILLIAM, thanks for sharing your views and experiences with us.
Wishing everyone a great day.
All of the above is 100% correct and yes, all aspects of the business is necessary, we do need to look at the numbers but the main issue is that when people are not united in their goals the there will be a lack of effective culture which means that employees are demoralized and then all the GP’s, turn overs and revenues are lost and the people that caused these losses are often the executive decisions instead of the blue collars. One should also note that most of our work forces are limited in their literacy and they can’t be held liable when the executive strategies in this VUCA environment is based on automated production lines.
More over the thing that 90% of organizations do wrong is that they employ people in certain roles and tell them what to do instead of allowing them the autonomy to apply their knowledge to improve efficiencies.
Then the obvious mistake is to think that a degree can replace experience, so instead of marrying the two they opt for the one that writes the best emails.
One aspect that proved irreplaceable is when you have the buy in from your team to reach a goal rather than to dictate the terms to reach the set target.
Most of the fortune 500 companies has seen that when they care about the work environment and conditions the results come effortlessly.
So now the question, is why do we have people that study to their doctrates and do endless research of what makes a company successful just to look the other way and do their own thing?
Thank you for raising the point and allowing others the opportunity and insight to our engineering environment