A few years ago, a CEO introduced me to his top 80 leaders at an offsite with a line that was meant as a joke: “This is Robin. He’s here to tell us what to do, so if this transformation fails, it’s his fault.”
The room laughed. I laughed too.
On the surface, it was harmless. Underneath, it was the most honest sentence of the day. In one line, he had expressed what many leadership teams hope for: someone else who can carry the risk of being wrong.
As the workshop went on, you could feel the relief in the room. People were looking for insurance. Every time a topic got messy – structure, accountability, trade-offs – heads turned to the external “adult” in the room. Not because they lacked experience, but because they were tired of being the one whose name was on the decision.
That day, it clicked for me: a big part of the modern leadership industry is selling emotional cover.
Consultants, coaches, trainers – we often function as a human buffer between leaders and consequence. When the project derails, the culture doesn’t shift, or the new strategy underperforms, there’s always a comforting sentence available: “We brought in the best people. If they couldn’t crack it, what chance did we have?”
That’s Adult Supervision as a Service, the unspoken operating model behind a lot of “support” functions around leadership. This essay is not an attack on experts. It’s a look in the mirror for leaders who have unconsciously outsourced the very thing nobody can do for them: responsibility.
The business model of borrowed backbone
If we’re honest, most of us have played this game at some point. When things get complex, we hire big-name consultants. If they don’t have a better answer, how could we be expected to? When the team is dysfunctional, we bring in a coach. If the coach can’t “fix” them, what chance did we have? When a transformation stalls, we launch another training program. If the trainers don’t get people on board, clearly resistance was just too high.
In each of these situations, the story is the same: “I am involved, I am engaged, but I am not really the one on the hook.”
Experts become a shield. Their presence sends a subtle message to boards, superiors, and regulators: “Don’t look at me. We followed best practice.”
On the surface, this looks sensible. Intelligent, even. Who wouldn’t consult experts? Underneath, something else is happening: we are renting responsibility. Instead of using advisors to stress-test our own judgment, we use them as insurance against blame.
Consultants, coaches, and trainers still have an important role. They bring pattern recognition, external perspective, and sometimes the blunt honesty internal people can’t afford to voice. But they are supposed to sharpen our decisions, not replace them.
The moment the external partner becomes the de facto adult in the room, leadership has left the building.
RACI therapy: when “C” pretends to be “A”
Time to talk about a framework that should have prevented all of this: RACI.
In theory, it is simple:
- Responsible – the people who do the work.
- Accountable – the person who ultimately owns the outcome and the decision.
- Consulted – the experts whose input helps shape the decision.
- Informed – the people who need to know what’s happening.
Clear. Elegant. Logical.
But, look at many major initiatives and you’ll see an interesting inversion: The consultants behave like the Accountable ones. They set the direction, write the roadmap, subtly dictate pace and priorities. The leaders behave like Consulted stakeholders. They “give input,” “raise concerns,” and “align”… but they rarely put a personal stake in the ground.
The team ends up merely Informed, invited to town halls and newsletters once the “big thinking” is done. On paper, the slide says: A: Executive Sponsor. C: Consultants.
In practice, the question “Who actually decided this?” has one honest answer: “The task force from (external company name here).”
This is the tragedy of RACI in many organizations: what was meant as a tool for clarity becomes a mask for diffused responsibility. The structure is there, but the courage is not.
The fix is uncomfortable and very simple: If you wear the title, you own the “A”. The “C” might be brilliant, persuasive, and highly paid. They are still “C”. They do not get to carry your responsibility just because they build nicer visuals.
Why smart leaders hide behind experts
This behavior is not a sign of weak character. It is a very human response to how organizations work. A few psychological forces make outsourcing responsibility extremely attractive.
First, blame avoidance. In high-stakes environments, being wrong is professionally expensive. Promotions, bonuses, and reputations depend on not being the person associated with failure. Saying “we followed expert advice” is a socially acceptable defense. You signal diligence and prudence, even if you quietly avoided taking a stand.
Second, diffusion of responsibility. Social psychology has shown how responsibility evaporates when many people are involved. The more names on a decision, the less any single person feels emotionally responsible. Large projects, joint steering committees, cross-functional task forces. These structures reduce personal responsibility by design. Add external experts, and responsibility dissolves almost completely.
Third, an external locus of control. When leaders talk about “headquarters,” “the board,” “market conditions,” “regulation,” or “the consultants” as decisive forces, they move agency outside themselves. If others are in control, they cannot be fully accountable. Outsourcing responsibility to experts fits neatly into this mental model: the power sits elsewhere.
Finally, cognitive overload. Leaders are flooded with information and decisions. Outsourcing judgment to experts feels like a rational efficiency move. Why struggle with a difficult decision when you can buy a sophisticated recommendation? Over time, this becomes a habit: renting thinking instead of stretching your own.
Combine these factors with a culture where mistakes are punished more harshly than inaction, and you get a perfect environment for Adult Supervision as a Service. Leaders remain busy, involved, and present, while carefully avoiding full ownership.
Three signs you outsourced responsibility
If you want a quick reality check, look at your last major initiative and ask yourself three simple questions.
Do your slides have more logos than names? If your program presentation proudly shows the brands of your consulting, coaching, and training partners, but you would struggle to list three internal people who are visibly accountable, you’ve probably outsourced responsibility. Experts have brands. Ownership has names.
Does every decision start with “they recommended…”? Pay attention to language. If your key phrases are “the consultants say,” “the coach suggests,” “the assessment shows,” you are already framing decisions as something that happens to you, not something you own. Using data and advice is smart. Hiding behind them is not.
Can you clearly answer “If this fails, whose fault is it?” Not in a witch-hunt way, but in a clarity way. If your honest answer is “I’m not sure, it’s very complex,” you have a responsibility problem. Complexity doesn’t remove ownership. It just makes it more tempting to spread it so thin that it disappears.
If all three feel uncomfortably familiar: good. That’s the bruise. Now we can work on the blueprint.
Reclaiming the “A”: how leaders take ownership back
Reclaiming responsibility is less about heroic speeches and more about small, stubborn habits. The goal is not to stop using experts, but to stop using them as a hiding place.
Start with a simple action: decide before you ask. Before the first consultant workshop or the first call with a coach, sit down with your core team and articulate your own view. What do you believe is happening? What would you do without external help? Where are you truly unsure? Capture this in writing.
Experts then react to your thinking instead of supplying thinking you never attempted. You remain the principal… they are the sounding board.
Next, name a real owner. Every major initiative needs an owner whose name everyone knows and whose face everyone can draw. Not a committee. Not a department. A person. You can still distribute work, but accountability sits with one human being. If you are that person, say it out loud: “This is my decision. I own the outcome.”
Then, use consultants as mirrors, not drivers. Tell your partners explicitly: “Your job is to stress-test our thinking, not to avoid us having any.” Ask them to highlight trade-offs, blind spots, implementation risks… and then make the decision yourself. If they start presenting final answers instead of options and consequences, you are drifting into outsourcing again.
Create one small but powerful ritual: in every governance meeting, ask, “Whose decision is this?” If the answer is a firm name, a committee, or vague corporate language, stop the meeting. Assign an “A” and make them speak. This simple discipline changes behavior over time.
For major strategic choices, keep a decision journal. Document why you decided what you did, what evidence you used, and what alternatives you rejected. Do this in your own words, not as a polished report. When things go wrong – and they will, sometimes – go back to it. You’ll learn faster, and you’ll build the internal muscle of judgment instead of buying it again and again.
None of this is glamorous. It is, however, leadership.
Stop training passengers, start training captains
There is another side to outsourced responsibility: what it does to your team. When leaders habitually bring in external “adults” to fix things, the team learns the subtle lesson that responsibility lives outside the room. People become sophisticated passengers. They can critique, comment, and resist, but they are not expected to own.
If you want a team that takes responsibility, you have to stop teaching them that serious decisions are made by people with different email domains.
In practice, this means shifting how and when you involve your own people. Involve the team before the experts. Let your people define the problem, propose options, and argue about trade-offs. When consultants arrive, they enter a space that already has an internal backbone. Their work becomes richer. Your team feels agency instead of feeling “done to.”
Change the language from “they should” to “I propose.” When someone says “Management should…”, ask: “What do you propose? What would you do if this was your call?” This is the training needed. Over time, people either step up or self-select into roles with less responsibility. Both outcomes are useful.
Make ownership visible and public. When a team member takes on responsibility, don’t just thank them privately. Say it in front of others: “This is Sarahs’s decision. I support it fully. If you disagree, talk to her first, then to me.” That sentence normalizes distributed ownership more than empowerment workshops.
And please, stop inviting the team to a parade of external experts while keeping them away from the conversations. If you want adults, treat them like adults. Let them see how decisions are wrestled with, not just how results are packaged.
You can outsource expertise. You can’t outsource courage.
Again, none of this is an argument against consultants, coaches, or trainers. Used well, they are powerful. The problem starts when they become replacement adults. When leaders quietly step back and allow “the project,” “the coach,” or “the methodology” to occupy the space where their own responsibility should sit.
The fix is not a new framework. It is a willingness to sit with the discomfort of being the only name on the line. Consultants can supply data, frameworks, and pattern recognition. They can help you think. But they cannot live with your decisions. In a world obsessed with external validation, the ultimate competitive advantage is surprisingly simple: the courage to say, “I listened to the advice, I looked at the data, and I might be wrong. But this one is on me.”