Checks and Balances

It took me over a month to open a new checking account at my local bank. It’s been years since I opened a bank account, and I was frustrated by what seemed to be excessive paperwork. At one point, the bank associate asked me whether I was a “politically exposed person.”

A politically exposed person, I asked?

She shrugged. She had no idea either.

I said no. Then I Googled it.

A politically exposed person is someone serving a public function, and thus at higher risk for bribery, corruption, or exploitation by foreign interests.

Interesting question. It’s an example of one arm of the government checking on another arm of government.

It’s called checks and balances, or distributed power, a corner piece of the American constitution, and other democratic governments around the world. The early founders were influenced by the writings of French philosopher, Montesquieu, who wrote, in his treatise, The Spirit of the Laws, that power ought to serve as a check on power (“le pouvoir arrête le pouvoir”).

In the United States we recognize it in our tripartite system of government— power not concentrated in any one body, but divided among the judicial, legislative, and executive branches of government:

• The legislature can pass laws, but the executive can veto them and courts can review their constitutionality
• The executive enforces laws but depends on legislative funding and faces oversight
• Courts can strike down laws but rely on the executive to enforce decisions and can be overridden by constitutional amendments

Power concentrated in just one person, party, or body was what the founders feared, with good reason, for power concentrated inevitably leads to despotism.

But checks and balances are clunky. They make the wheels of government turn slowly. They’re inefficient and cumbersome. They result in bloated bureaucracies, and seem ill suited to our complex society. I mean, a month to open a bank account?

Dismantling those checks and balances promises simplicity and decisiveness—one leader, one vision, no gridlock. Wouldn’t that just make things efficient? That seems to be the direction we’re drifting towards, globally, and here in America.

Speed and efficiency matter. It’s true that government bureaucracies are cumbersome, inefficient, and expensive. Should they be reformed? Of course.

But is speed and efficiency the only goal of government, as if it were a tech startup, or corporation trying to maximize quarterly profits for shareholders? Governance is also meant to find balance—weighing different perspectives, considering unintended consequences, and crafting solutions that work for as many people as possible.

But even more crucial, checks and balances are in place to check and balance us, our blind spots, our self-interest, our cognitive errors. The building bricks of institutions, governments, and companies are people, and when people have power, they need to be checked and balanced.

It’s also wildly inaccurate to think that one person can do it all, by themselves, have all the answers and call all the shots. Yet we can’t help ourselves. We revel in hero stories. We idolize athletes, revere rock-star CEOs, and obsess over tech geniuses. But leadership is far, far from a solo endeavor. There is no single CEO or politician or person in leadership who ascended to those heights of power without countless assists, often underappreciated and unnamed: The networks that gave them advantages and connections. The teams that performed for them. The financial support of family or friends. The luck of timing. The government incentives that funded new research. The market forces that buoyed the business.

Whether you’re the President, the CEO, or just an average citizen, you cannot trust your thinking, and no, you can’t trust your gut either.

We’re all prone to error. And the more successful you’ve been, the more you may think you’re immune from misjudgment, lulled by the feeling of mastery. But genius in one domain does not make you a genius in another.

We all have blind spots. And the more power we have, the bigger those blind spots. Consider this study by Zenger and Folkman who examined 69,000 leaders evaluated by over 750,00 raters. They discovered that the leaders who rated themselves the highest were rated lowest by their raters.

In fact, the more people overrated themselves, the higher the probability that they had fatal flaws and the lower the probability that they had any strengths in the eyes of their coworkers.

So, yes, we need checks and balances, guardrails against power run amok, in government, and in businesses. We need things like feedback channels where employees can safely challenge decisions, diverse teams where different viewpoints and expertise naturally balance each other, advisory boards or committees providing independent perspective on key decisions, and an ombuds office or transparent escalation paths when employees have a grievance in their own chain of command.

But on a personal level, too, we need to check ourselves, to guard against our own one-sidedness and blind spots. We need friends and colleagues who will tell us hard truths. We need to interrogate our choices and instincts, waiting before acting. And we need to solicit alternative and opposing viewpoints, challenging ourselves to find some truth in the opposition, notice our discomfort, and do it anyway.

Democracy is an inner game as much as an outer game. It may be falling out of fashion because it takes qualities that are not easy to develop, that need to be worked at diligently, such as

• Patience and resilience to accept that change is slow, setbacks happen, and compromise is necessary.
• Intellectual humility to recognize where we may be wrong, and that our opponents may have a point.
• Self-discipline. The democratic process is long and often frustrating. It requires discipline to stay engaged, vote, protest, advocate, and resist the temptation of authoritarian shortcuts.
• Engagement. Democracy doesn’t work without participation. Things feel overwhelming and futile. But nihilism is what autocrats feed on. It’s important to stay informed, to invest in your own community, to cast your vote and your voice.

Checks on power is not an obstacle to be overcome or a block to efficiency but an essential tool for avoiding the blind spots of power and for helping bring out the better angels of our nature.