What happens when companies become so focused on discipline, metrics and structure that employees stop taking the initiative? Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu has a provocative answer: organisations may have to choose between comfortable certainty and the discomfort of independent thinking. In a post on X on August 24, Vembu posed a simple question about organisational culture: do employees wait for instructions from the top, or do they “seize the initiative and run”?
His argument centres on two very different workplace cultures
According to Vembu, highly metric-driven organisations often create a culture where employees wait for instructions from senior leadership. Such workplaces can offer something businesses value: predictability, certainty and clearly defined expectations. But that stability can come with a cost.“If the top” fails to set the right course, Vembu argued, the entire organisation can end up heading in the wrong direction. A workforce accustomed to following instructions may be less likely to question the strategy or independently change course.
The workplace that feels a little chaotic
Vembu’s alternative is an organisation where people are encouraged to take initiative. But he does not present this as a perfect workplace. An initiative-driven culture, he said, can feel chaotic. Employees may disagree frequently, challenge one another and constantly feel that the work is not good enough. Yet that discomfort may also be evidence that people are thinking independently rather than simply executing instructions.
Vembu illustrated the point with programmers. He joked that a smart programmer can look at another programmer’s code and immediately think: “I can do better.” In other words, disagreement is not necessarily a sign that an organisation is failing. Sometimes, it means people care enough to challenge what is already there.
When the market becomes the disciplinarian
There is, however, a problem with giving employees extensive freedom: who keeps everyone moving in the right direction? Vembu’s answer is the outside world. In a chaotic, initiative-driven organisation, he said, the market may provide the “occasional discipline”. Customers, competition and commercial reality eventually determine which ideas survive.That is very different from a company where internal systems, targets and senior management provide most of the discipline. For Vembu, neither approach is entirely comfortable. One gives certainty but risks suppressing initiative. The other encourages initiative but accepts disagreement and uncertainty as part of the process.
Why ‘disciplined initiative’ may fail
This is where Vembu’s argument becomes most striking. Many companies try to have the best of both worlds: they want employees to follow rigorous processes, hit measurable targets and maintain discipline, while also expecting them to constantly innovate, challenge decisions and take independent initiative.
As per Sridhar Vembu, selling can also improve communication skills.
Vembu believes that combination can backfire. “In my experience,” he wrote, trying to create a “highly disciplined culture of seizing the initiative” produces “the worst of both worlds”. His argument is essentially about trade-offs. A company cannot necessarily demand the certainty produced by tight control and, at the same time, expect the messy independence that comes from giving people room to act.
A lesson for modern workplaces
The point does not mean discipline or metrics are inherently bad. Clear goals, accountability and processes remain essential, particularly in large organisations. Rather, Vembu is questioning what happens when those systems become so dominant that employees learn to wait for permission instead of making decisions.His comments come from someone who has spent decades building Zoho. Vembu stepped down as Zoho’s CEO in January 2025 and moved into the role of Chief Scientist, where he said he would focus on deep R&D initiatives. Co-founder Shailesh Kumar Davey became group CEO. That makes his latest observation less about a theoretical management debate and more about a philosophy he has developed through years of running a large technology company.
Certainty or initiative?
Vembu’s central message is ultimately uncomfortable because there may be no perfect workplace culture. A company can create a predictable environment where employees know exactly what is expected of them. But too much certainty can make people reluctant to question the system.Or it can encourage employees to take ownership, challenge each other and experiment, accepting that the workplace may sometimes feel messy and uncomfortable. For Vembu, the mistake is pretending those tensions can simply be eliminated. You can have certainty, or you can have initiative. But if you try to impose both through rigid discipline, he argues, you may end up getting neither.
