Executive Deterministic Parrots

Ever noticed how tech executives sound eerily alike, repeating buzzwords and predictions with nearly identical phrasing? It is not your imagination: many leaders become deterministic parrots, a corporate ritual in which leaders mimic peers instead of daring to be original.

Leaders fear straying from the flock. But why do so many executives parrot one another instead of thinking for themselves? And why do the rest of us often fall for it?

Birds of a feather

The line “No one ever got fired for buying IBM” captures the essence of the corporate herd mentality: executives prefer safety over originality. Psychologists call this defensive decision making, which is a form of loss aversion. It is why McKinsey, BCG, and Bain are often nothing more than executive insurance. When everyone else follows the same trend or uses the standard playbook, a leader feels protected by doing exactly the same. The individual risk for failure is negligible. Standing out with a unique strategy might bring great rewards if it succeeds, but it also exposes leaders to much greater personal risk.

This phenomenon has a fancy name in sociology: institutional isomorphism. It is the tendency for organizations in the same field to become similar over time. Companies often face invisible pressures that drive such homogeneity or they are coerced through regulation, but more often than not it is mimetic isomorphism: organizations simply copy each other, especially in uncertain times. Executives see a competitor or industry leader tout a new idea and feel compelled to jump on the bandwagon. In corporations as with animals, the middle of a group feels safer.

The executive echo chamber

Nothing illustrates executive parroting better than the generative AI boom. After OpenAI’s ChatGPT went viral, AI became the corporate mantra of the year. By the end of 2023, there were over 30,000 mentions of AI on companies’ earning calls, a 60× increase from the year before! CEOs everywhere peppered their public talks with AI references, lest they appear behind the times. They end up sounding like robots on a predetermined script except that they lack the warmth that comes from a battery pack.

Mark Zuckerberg must have strategic whiplash from his own double U-turn or W-turn through hypeville. Around 2013, Facebook founded FAIR, Fundamental AI Research. Then in 2021, the rebranded Meta shifted towards the metaverse, throwing buckets of cash at scaling misogyny. More recently, the CEO squawked a pivot back to AI with a massive investment into Scale AI in the quest for superintelligence.

And there is of course Jensen Huang whose various positions on quantum computing in the last six months explain superposition better than most physics textbooks. He initially said quantum computing would be decades away, only to backtrack that. Recently, he said that the technology was at an inflection point without there having been any breakthrough to match such a wild statement. He merely changed his tune when it was convenient for NVIDIA to feed the hype machine after investing in PsiQuantum.

This is textbook mimetic behaviour: nobody wants to be the only one not singing the popular tune. If AI (or quantum) is perceived as the next big thing, every CEO feels they must loudly agree, or risk looking clueless. That bird has, unfortunately, already flown the coop.

Parrots in a gilded cage

What drives this executive groupthink? Simple: the fear of being wrong alone. Diverging from industry consensus is dangerous: if a leader bucks the trend and fails, they are blamed for poor judgement. But if they follow the trend and fail, so does everyone else too. Standing out eliminates the safety net of the crowd.

Social psychology backs this up. Humans are wired for social proof: if all our peers do something, we assume it is probably correct. Executives are no exception. It seems that almost no one in executive positions internalized their mothers’ admonition: “If all your friends jump off a bridge, does that mean you have to do it too?” McKinsey of all companies offers a surprising suggestion: contrarian leaders can use the herd mentality to test ideas that go against the consensus view, but few do.

An ironic consequence is that leaders often convince themselves the fad is real. Repeat a buzzword often enough and it starts to sound like truth. Such an argumentum ad nauseam by a large enough group of overly confident proselytizers is the basis for cults. And executive decisions.

Of course, executives tend to lack a deep understanding of various complex trends or technologies, which is entirely understandable. In that case, it is much easier to parrot what others are already saying, or what you believe they are saying. The only problem is that such circular parroting is akin to Chinese whispers: what may have started off as a genuine and original messages (e.g. a hybrid work policy for a specific company in a niche industry) becomes a distorted version of no one’s truth (blanket RTO mandates for everyone), yet somehow commonly acknowledged, because no one remembers whence it originated.

The emperor’s new feathers

Executives mimic peers due to a mixture of social proof, risk aversion, limited knowledge, and the fear of missing out. But why do people fall for it? Many employees do see through the empty buzzwords. Most days you have barely finished rolling your eyes when you can already feel your eye muscles stretch in anticipation of the next eyeroll.

Yet no one is immune from the power of consensus. The media provide a megaphone: the executive deterministic parrot that squawks loudest has their voice amplified. When every company pushes the same narrative, it normalizes it. Even if people do not fall for it, they do accept it as the way things are. For example, when dozens of CEOs all insist AI is the future, workers feel the pressure to upskill or risk being left behind. The FOMO trickles down. Certain employees hold on to buzzwords as corporate life rafts to fit in, similar to executives who do not wish to stand out. It is a tricky balance between the rock of conformity and the performative hard place.

Insensitive parroted messages can damage morale. For instance, when Micha Kaufman of Fiverr emailed staff that “AI is coming for you“, it did not motivate, but caused an obvious panic instead. In the case of Duolingo, Luis von Ahn’s “AI-first” memo caused an uproar because it devalued human work. Or look at Klarna’s Sebastian Siemiatkowski who used an AI avatar to deliver the company’s earnings while accepting an 862% pay rise amid mounting quarterly losses, proving once and for all that the job of CEO can partially be outsourced to LLMs. Leaders who regurgitate the latest trend without addressing employee fears or without a unique humane vision risk looking out of touch at best and callous at worst.

Investors often reward the parrots, at least in the short term, which is pretty much the only term most care about. When every company says the same thing, though, it is hard to tell who actually has a real plan versus who is bluffing. The market does eventually separates the real innovators from the copycats, but not before a lot of mimicry and money have gone to and fro.

Spread your wings

Authenticity matters. Employees trust leaders who paint a clear and unique vision, not merely stir around in the buzzword soup. Company values that feel copy-pasted (e.g. integrity, innovative, customer-centric) fail to inspire anyone. A leader with a distinct point of view can energize an organization, but only if they are willing to take that risk of being different.

Not all leaders are content to be part of the parrot pandemonium. A few contrarians stand out, such as the founders of Basecamp (now 37signals). While most executives were offering AI-first strategies, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (a.k.a. DHH) urged curiosity over fear. Their track record of independent thinking has earned them respect as original leaders: they have so far avoided venture capital and with it the growth-at-all-costs business model of most startups. They also have unique perspectives on agile methodologies, such as Shape Up. They prove you can thrive without parroting everyone else.

Moulting the mimicry

The pressure on executives to conform is real and at times rational. But it is also a trap. If every company looks and talks the same, none will truly stand out and excel. So the next time you hear a corporate leader recite the trend of the day remember: it is probably institutional instinct at work, not genius.

As observers, we can afford to be sceptical of corporate echo chambers yet also show a tiny bit of empathy: leaders are after all humans who must navigate shareholder expectations and golf courses, so parroting other executives is safe yet hardly original. Or as Stanford GSB professor Jeffrey Pfeffer aptly said: “People do all kinds of stupid things all the time. I don’t know why you’d expect managers to be any different.”