Forum

You know what your mistake is.

I know. Marcus Aurelius, just above one of his quotes, hit the nail on the head. I won't say which one exactly :)

The thing is, all your examples with the boss, power, and various "oppositions" imply that all participants in this structure want to take the boss's place.

But you missed the point...

In the scheme described above, there is no struggle for power (except for point 4, which is rare); it is purely a struggle of ideas. Which can be pursued equally successfully from any of the positions described. If I'm not too lazy, I'll explain later how the same picture looks from the perspective of people from different groups.

Let me reveal a small secret to you - in healthy teams, the struggle for supreme power is not conducted at all most of the time. Often, the top position in the formal hierarchy is occupied by a person who ended up there by chance, and everyone is okay with that.

But the struggle of ideas in a living, developing team is almost always ongoing.