The founder’s influence can help a business take flight. To travel further, that influence must become a capability shared across the organization.
Dr. Phạm Hà – Founding President & CEO, LuxGroup®
On a ship, the captain needs authority to respond when conditions change. The engineering crew knows things about the vessel that no one at headquarters can fully know. The hospitality team notices what a guest needs, sometimes before the guest says a word. If every decision must wait for my approval in Hanoi, I may retain a sense of control. We may also lose time, initiative, and valuable knowledge from the people closest to the work.
This is the question I face as LuxGroup® develops into A House of Small Giants: a family of specialist businesses in travel, cruising, hospitality, food, and culture. The parent company must provide direction and support. Each business needs leaders with enough authority to take responsibility for its performance. Between those two requirements lies the challenge of power.
Module 1 of Power and Influence for Positive Impact has helped me examine that challenge more carefully. It has prompted five lessons about how LuxGroup makes decisions, develops its people, and keeps its promises to guests.
1. Judge power by its purpose and use
I have long associated leadership with a simple responsibility: if you have influence, use it to serve. I still believe that. Yet “leading is serving” does not, by itself, settle a difficult decision about capital, people, or a subsidiary’s freedom to act.
Power can be used to force agreement. It can also give a capable person the means to do something valuable that was previously beyond their reach. The difference becomes visible in our choices. Whose views do we hear? Who receives resources? Who gets to decide? Who takes responsibility when a decision has consequences?
At LuxGroup, I could select a new product simply because I founded the company. But the person who works with guests every day may understand the opportunity better than I do. My influence should help that idea receive a fair hearing. Sometimes serving requires me to make a decision. At other times, it requires me to make room for someone else to make a better one.
That is a demanding test for a founder. Good intentions matter, but colleagues experience power through what I do: whether I listen, whether I honour the authority I have delegated, and whether I remain open to being wrong.
2. Look beyond the organizational chart to find influence
An organizational chart tells us who reports to whom. It cannot fully show who holds a trusted partner relationship, who can resolve a technical problem, or whom colleagues seek out when something goes wrong.
On a cruise, the parent company may approve investment and brand standards. The safety of a voyage also depends on the captain’s and engineering crew’s judgement. In destination management, a partner manager may understand an international client’s needs through years of earning their trust. These people control resources others value: knowledge, relationships, access, and the ability to act.
The strength of that influence depends in part on alternatives. If a capability is difficult to replace, the person who holds it may have considerable power, whatever their title. If several people can provide it, the balance changes. The same analysis applies in both directions: our subsidiary leaders need the group’s capital and support, while the group needs their expertise and commitment.
This changes the questions I ask before a decision. Alongside “Who has authority to approve it?” I need to ask: “Who knows what we need to know? Who must carry out the decision? Who bears the risk if we misunderstand the situation?”
Formal authority remains important. Its most useful role is to bring those answers into the decision, not to assume they all sit at the top.
3. Give leaders the resources that make responsibility real
A subsidiary CEO can be held responsible for revenue and service quality. But if every adjustment to a product, price, supplier, or guest response requires approval from headquarters, that leader cannot fully own the outcome. We have assigned a target while retaining the means to reach it elsewhere.
LuxGroup needs a careful boundary. The parent company should retain decisions that shape the whole group: business portfolio direction, major capital commitments, key leadership appointments, brand architecture, safety standards, and matters that affect several businesses. Within an approved budget and agreed risk limits, subsidiary leaders should be able to decide matters close to their guests and daily operations.
Authority alone is not enough. A leader testing a new experience needs customer information, a workable budget, access to relevant specialists, and a way to assess the result. Without these resources, an invitation to “take initiative” may feel like an expectation without the means to fulfil it.
The distinction becomes concrete in the decisions we face. A major change to the positioning of Emperor Cruises belongs in a group discussion because it affects our brand architecture. Adding suites to a vessel requires capital, technical, and safety assessment. A product combining destination management with a cruise needs the two teams to collaborate within clear rules on internal pricing and final responsibility.
I want to test these principles against actual decisions at LuxGroup. Which ones are delayed? Where does the delay occur? Who lacks information or authority? What improves when the boundary is made clear? A delegation framework succeeds only when the people using it can answer a practical question: Can I decide this, whom should I consult, and when must I seek approval?
4. Build influence by understanding what others value
Founders often have strong ideas about what would help their organizations. I should be careful, though, about assuming that I know what a subsidiary leader, frontline colleague, or local partner values most.
One leader may need the freedom to resolve a problem quickly. Another may want coaching before taking on a new decision. A team may need its contribution to be recognized. If I offer only what I think people need, I can miss the obstacle that matters to them.
My first step is to listen. I want to ask our business leaders which decisions wait too long, what would help them act independently, and what makes it difficult to challenge an idea from headquarters. Their answers can guide where the parent company puts its time, money, and expertise.
Influence also works in both directions. LuxGroup relies on the market knowledge, creativity, and execution of its businesses. Those businesses rely on the group for capital, reputation, technology, and cooperation across brands. Recognizing that mutual dependence gives us a more honest starting point. We can then build the ability to act together in service of guests, employees, and the places that welcome us.
5. Put limits on the founder’s power
There is a risk that rarely appears in a management report: a founder can silence an alternative without intending to. I may ask a question and have the room hear a decision. I may speak first and cause others to set aside their own proposals.
Experience helps me recognize some risks early. It can also make me too confident in my judgement. I want to ask more questions before reaching a conclusion, let the person responsible explain their reasoning, and speak later when a meeting needs several perspectives. Once authority has been clearly delegated, I must respect it within the limits we agreed.
Personal discipline needs organizational support. LuxGroup needs written decision rights, a way to record exceptions, clear responsibility for safety, and regular opportunities for subsidiary leaders to question how the system works. These safeguards give people a basis for speaking up, including when they disagree with me.
One day, a decision that makes me proud may be one I did not make: a manager had the right information, consulted the right specialist, acted within their authority, and could explain the result. When that happens consistently, LuxGroup will depend less on its founder and become stronger through the capabilities of its people.
I still believe that leading is serving. These lessons give that belief a practical meaning: help others gain the voice, resources, and authority their responsibilities require. A House of Small Giants will be strong when each of its leaders can stand on their own feet—and knows when to steer with the others.
