A quick check-in: I’m deep into revising a chapter this week, and one particular metaphor keeps making me laugh (and occasionally want to bang my head against the desk). It’s the one about hiring a chef for their culinary creativity, then insisting they get permission before seasoning the soup.

The more I think about it, the more this feels like the perfect metaphor for personal agency in corporate environments. So let’s dig into it.

Reclaiming Your Expertise in a Permission-Seeking Culture

Here’s what I find fascinating about modern corporate life: we’ve created elaborate systems that systematically train intelligent, capable people to ask permission for things they’re already qualified to decide.

Think about it. Your organisation hired you specifically for your expertise, your judgement, your ability to solve problems. Yet somehow, you find yourself seeking approval for decisions that fall squarely within your domain of knowledge.

The Permission Creep

It starts harmless enough. A new process here, an approval layer there. “Just to ensure consistency,” they say. “For quality control purposes.”

Before you know it, you’re asking permission to: - Choose the font for an internal presentation - Send a routine email to a client you’ve worked with for months - Prioritise your own daily tasks - Express a professional opinion in your area of expertise

The irony is exquisite: organisations hire experts, then create systems that prevent them from exercising expertise.

When Did You Stop Seasoning the Soup?

I’ve been reflecting on my own career, trying to pinpoint the moment I stopped trusting my professional instincts and started seeking validation for decisions I was perfectly capable of making.

Was it after that meeting where my straightforward recommendation was questioned endlessly until I doubted my own analysis? Was it when I watched a colleague get reprimanded for making a sensible decision without “proper consultation”? Or was it simply the slow erosion that happens when every small initiative requires a committee’s blessing?

The transformation is so gradual, we don’t notice we’ve handed over our professional agency until we’re standing in the kitchen, ladle in hand, waiting for someone to tell us whether the soup needs salt.

The Expert’s Dilemma

Here’s what’s particularly crazy about this dynamic: the higher your expertise, the more absurd the permission-seeking becomes.

I know compliance officers who need approval to issue compliance opinions—the very thing they were hired to provide. I’ve watched project managers seek permission to manage their projects. I’ve seen analysts ask for approval to analyse.

We’ve created a culture where demonstrating competence somehow requires proving you’re not competent enough to act independently.

Reclaiming Your Professional Agency

The good news? You can start seasoning the soup again. Not by staging a corporate rebellion, but by recognising where you’ve unconsciously ceded authority that was always rightfully yours.

Start with the smallest decisions. That internal email you’ve been drafting and re-drafting? Send it. The formatting choice you’ve been agonising over? Pick one and move on. The professional opinion someone asked for? Give it, based on your expertise, not your fear.

Distinguish between collaboration and permission-seeking. Seeking input is professional wisdom. Seeking permission for things within your expertise is learned helplessness.

Trust your professional instincts. You weren’t hired by accident. Your judgement, honed by experience and training, is valuable. Use it.

Remember: you’re the chef they hired. If the soup needs seasoning, season it. That’s literally what they’re paying you to do.

The Compliance Officer’s Advantage

In my role, I’ve discovered something quite useful: compliance officers already know how to navigate the space between rules and judgement. We’re trained to interpret guidelines, assess risk, and make reasoned decisions within frameworks.

This skill translates beautifully to reclaiming professional agency. It’s not about breaking rules—it’s about understanding which decisions are truly collaborative and which are simply places where you’ve learned to seek unnecessary validation.

A Small Experiment

This week, I challenge you to notice three moments when you’re about to seek permission for something you’re perfectly qualified to decide. Before you send that “just checking” email or schedule that “quick alignment” meeting, pause and ask:

Am I seeking input because this decision benefits from collaboration, or am I seeking permission because I’ve trained myself not to trust my own expertise?

Then, for at least one of those three moments, season the soup. Make the decision. Trust your judgement. See what happens.

What I’m Learning

As I write this book about purposeful productivity, I keep discovering how many ways we sabotage our own effectiveness by outsourcing decisions we’re capable of making. The irony isn’t lost on me: in our pursuit of being collaborative team players, we often become less valuable to our teams.

The organisations that thrive are those that hire good people and let them do good work. The individuals who thrive are those who remember they were hired to be experts, not permission-seekers.

What about you? Where have you been seeking permission to season the soup? I’d love to hear about the small acts of professional agency you’re reclaiming—or the absurd approval processes that make you question your sanity. Reply and tell me about it.

P.S. The manuscript is taking shape beautifully, and I’m particularly excited about the chapters on intelligent non-compliance and strategic rule-breaking. Sometimes the most professional thing you can do is trust your professional judgement. More on that soon.

Keep seasoning that soup,

Inès

P.S. If this resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need permission to trust their own expertise. And if you know someone trapped in approval hell, send them this newsletter—they’ll thank you for it.