Success Quote by Robert Shea

Power gravitates toward self-interest, and organizations provide the stage on which that drama plays out. Robert Shea observed how people who crave influence are drawn to institutions not to lose themselves in a cause, but to gain leverage. Once they hold sway, any clash between personal incentives and collective goals tends to be resolved in their favor. The result is not an aberration but a pattern that arises from structure: the people with the most latitude to decide outcomes are also those most capable of shaping rules, rewards, and narratives to justify looking after themselves.

This insight echoes the principal-agent problem and Michels’s iron law of oligarchy. Agents possess more information than principals and can hide self-serving choices behind complexity, while oligarchic tendencies push power toward a few who then protect their position. In business, it shows up as executives managing for quarterly bonuses rather than long-term health. In government, it appears as turf protection and policy drift. In nonprofits, it is mission creep as leaders chase prestige or funding metrics that flatter them more than they serve beneficiaries.

Shea, who wrote about conspiracies and institutions in both fiction and essays like The Empire of the Rising Scum, treats this not as a moral indictment of individuals but as a sober read of incentives. Good intentions cannot reliably defeat the gravity of self-interest when structures reward it. The implication is practical: design matters. Transparent metrics, distributed authority, real accountability, and alignment of rewards with mission can narrow the gap between personal gain and organizational purpose. Culture also matters, but culture without constraints is a hope, not a guarantee. The warning is clear. If influence accumulates without counterweights, the interests of the influential will become the organization’s hidden strategy, no matter what the mission statement says.