Success removes the people able to say no to a creator, and the quality of the work often falls.
TV Tropes describes the pattern in publishing and film: a newcomer accepts editorial changes in order to be published, but after a hit becomes marketable on name alone, and editors stop pushing back. The same page defends editors, noting that the interference people remember is the kind that failed.
In practice
- A founder whose first product succeeded now overrules every reviewer, and the second product ships with the problems the reviewers flagged.
- A bestselling novelist's books grow longer each year because nobody at the publisher will ask for cuts.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is power: people who gain power take less advice, as See and colleagues found in 2011. Another is that success removes the incentive to listen, since the creator's name sells the work regardless. A third is regression to the mean, which makes any follow-up to a peak look worse.
- In its favour
- Consistent with research showing that power reduces advice-taking, and with the organisational pattern in which successful leaders surround themselves with agreement.
- Against it
- Many successful creators keep improving, and editors also damage work, as the complaint about executive meddling records. Some of the apparent decline is regression to the mean rather than lost editing.
- Standing
- Compare the Icarus paradox and regression to the mean.
- Subject
- Creativity & Work
- Essay
- The success literature and its sceptics