---
id: "action-recruit-truth-to-power"
type: "action-item"
source_timestamps: ["¶87", "¶88", "¶89", "¶90"]
tags: ["team-building", "leadership"]
related: ["quote-truth-to-power", "claim-strategy-is-constant-dialogue"]
speakers: ["Indra Nooyi"]
action: "Hire executives who will aggressively push back on your ideas and force prioritization."
outcome: "Prevents the CEO from operating in an ivory tower and reduces organizational initiative bloat."
source_url: "https://hbr.org/2025/10/innovating-at-the-core-and-for-the-future"
source_title: "Innovating at the Core—and for the Future"
sources: ["futures"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-futures"
originDay: 2
articleStem: "hbr-cl-91-innovating-core-and-future"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2025/10/innovating-at-the-core-and-for-the-future"
sourceTitle: "Innovating at the Core—and for the Future"
---
# Recruit Truth to Power

**Action:** Hire executives who will aggressively push back on your ideas and force prioritization.

Actively recruit and surround yourself with executives who are comfortable pushing back and telling truth to power — see [[quote-truth-to-power]]. A CEO should expect to 'lose' on about **50%** of their suggestions if they have built a properly functioning, unselfish leadership team that prevents initiative overload. This is the human mechanism behind [[claim-strategy-is-constant-dialogue]].

**Outcome:** Prevents the CEO from operating in an ivory tower and reduces organizational initiative bloat.

**Enrichment.** Strongly supported by organizational-behavior research on psychological safety and 'speak-up cultures' as predictors of performance and error reduction, and by governance advice to cultivate dissent over 'yes-men'.