Rubber stamp errors

jchan
Fri, 24 Apr 2026 13:56:38 GMT

[Part of Organizational Cultures sequence]

The "rubber stamp" is unduly maligned. When a Principal decision-maker is asked to ratify the actions of an Agent, but in practice never (or almost never) refuses, we call the Principal a rubber stamp. But this can mean one of two very different things:

Powerless rubber stamp: The true power in fact rests with the Agent, even though in theory it "should" rest with the Principal.

Powerful rubber stamp: The possibility that ratification may be refused incentivizes the Agent never to act contrary to the Principal's wishes.

Confusing these situations can lead to various problems:

| If you're the...
Principal | Agent
...and you don't realize the rubber stamp is... | Powerful | Reflexive contrarianism | Usurpation
Powerless | Careless delegation | Pointless bureaucracy

Reflexive contrarianism

This is probably the most pernicious problem of the four, because it undermines the very possibility of delegation, ensuring that the group can never accomplish anything cooperatively. You (the Principal) are being asked to ratify an action of your Agent, which is probably fairly similar to what you yourself would've come up with if you had looked into the matter in depth.

However, you fear being reduced to a "mere" rubber stamp, because you think that means your interests will be sidelined. Therefore, you instinctively treat the Agent's proposal itself as evidence against it being a good one - "Whatever it is, I'm against it!" At best, you come to mistrust this particular Agent but you remain open to finding another; at worst, you are entirely unable to comprehend the possibility that someone could tailor a proposal to your preferences while suppressing their own.

Usurpation

Perhaps you (the Agent) think your Principal is not very good at evaluating proposals; you therefore undertake to hoodwink them by starting from the bottom-line of what you personally want, and then working backward to find some explanation that the Principal will find vaguely plausible. You may thus be surprised when the expected approval is denied. Now, even if the Principal trusted you before, they certainly don't now.

Careless delegation

When you (the Principal) are appointing an Agent, you may believe that your choice of Agent doesn't really matter all that much, because you'll be able to double-check what they do later, and because you expect any problems with what the Agent does to be immediately evident. But then suppose it turns out that you are in fact a powerless rubber stamp. Now you'll be caught off guard when suddenly your Agent starts acting at odds with your interests, and you find yourself wishing you had scrutinized them more before appointing them, but by now it's too late.

It is this problem in particular that turns a growing clique into an embarrassed cult. A clique may have someone who handles "administrative" tasks like selecting the time and place for meetings, but then one day this person turns to one of the group members and says "You are banned from this group." Now there's bound to be trouble.

Pointless bureaucracy

As the Agent you do your work with the understanding that you will need to seek final approval from the Principal, but when you approach them to do so, they are bewildered and irritated that you're again pestering them with this matter they they thought they had disposed of by handing it off to you.

In isolation this error is fairly harmless, but in aggregate it tends to breed cynicism and selfishness among the people who would otherwise be happy to work as Agents. When your efforts to satisfy the preferences of the Principal are not only not met with gratitude, but with disdain and annoyance, you can't help but think "Why bother?".

Conclusion

If something is truly a powerless rubber stamp, then by all means get rid of it. But just because it's a rubber stamp doesn't mean it's pointless. In fact, it is precisely the lack of rubber-stamping that is an organizational red-flag. It means that nobody in the group trusts anybody else enough to delegate any meaningful work to them; it means that the group members are such strangers to each other that nobody knows how to model anyone else's desires, and thus substitutes their own whenever serving as an Agent; it means that the group does not even possess the cultural and conceptual toolkit for cooperation. Don't be like this. Love your rubber stamps.

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