Gatekeeping Is the Death of Progress

Silos don’t protect power—they suffocate potential. Real leadership shares the playbook.

The smartest person in the room isn’t the one with all the answers, it’s the one who shares them.

I learned that the hard way.

When I first crossed over from founder-led companies into the world of corporate media, I thought I understood how leadership worked. I came in bright-eyed, ready to collaborate, and contribute. In my world, ideas were currency. Collaboration, rapid experimentation, and open knowledge sharing with no political filter was the norm. The faster we all learned, the faster the company grew.

But what I found in corporate culture shocked me. I was a deer in headlights, excited and naive.

You’d ask a question and get half an answer.
Just enough to keep up the illusion of collaboration and teamwork, but not enough to truly thrive.

Institutional knowledge was guarded like gold, afraid that sharing it would diminish their power or replaceability. Not the sensitive Hollywood kind meant to protect press leaks, I understood that. I’m talking about the day-to-day processes. The contacts. The playbooks. The “how we do things here” that make a job function.

I’ll never forget someone telling me, when I asked why they didn’t share a critical deck or context for a meeting, “I didn’t get that luxury when I started, so neither should you.”

I was stunned.

The notion was that because they had to figure things out the hard way, I should too. This mentality is the antithesis of leadership and progress. What I was bumping up against wasn’t incompetence, it was fear. Gatekeeping, disguised as strategy. Control, masked as competence. Self-preservation, dressed up as seniority.

But in true Maryam fashion, I didn’t let it stop me. I asked better questions. I found workarounds. I found allies and mentors who were generous with their knowledge. And most importantly, I broke the cycle. I made it my mission to lead differently. I shared what I learned openly, and I made sure that anyone who joined after me didn’t have to struggle through the same fog.

In every leadership role, I’ve implemented systems to share knowledge widely — revenue numbers, KPIs, campaign performance, strategy docs, post-mortems. Why? Because you can’t get people aligned if you keep them in the dark.

I created shared dashboards. Wrote org-wide resource guides. Built internal FAQs and open trackers. Held “show your work” meetings. Not because I had to. Because I believe you can’t build trust without transparency, and trust moves faster than fear. And you can’t scale what you gatekeep.

The Problem with Gatekeeping

We’ve glamorized the lone genius. The irreplaceable “rockstar” employee. The person who knows just enough to make themselves indispensable. Too many companies operate like medieval castles, exclusive inner circles, siloed teams, and leaders who only appear to dispense polished soundbites at town halls. Information is treated as power, so it’s closely guarded.

But here’s the truth:

Gatekeeping slows everything down.
It creates confusion. Resentment. Bottlenecks.
It kills innovation. And it costs companies real money.

The Cost of Gatekeeping

(Yes, there’s data. Lots of it.)

Gatekeeping isn’t just a cultural problem, it’s a direct hit to the business’s bottom line. Here’s what research shows happens when people hoard knowledge and teams operate in silos:

• Slower innovation cycles: Companies with strong knowledge-sharing practices are 36% more likely to outperform in innovation (Zhao et al., 2021). Silos crush idea flow.

• Wasted time: Siloed information causes employees to spend an absurd amount of time just hunting down data. I lived this. It felt like solving a mystery novel just to do my job. Every day, a new clue. Employees lose up to 12 hours a week just searching for the information they need (Forrester, 2022).

• Duplicated efforts: 79% of employees say their teams are disconnected. 68% admit they don’t know what other departments are working on (Forrester, 2022). That means teams solve the same problems in isolation, especially after mergers, when knowledge splinters across legacy systems.

• Slower decisions and missed market opportunities: When critical insights stay buried, leadership makes slower, and riskier, decisions. That lag time means competitors beat you to market (Forrester, 2022).

• Burnout and disengagement: Gatekeeping creates distrust and apathy. Disengaged employees cost the global economy $438 billion annually in lost productivity (Gallup, 2023).

• Retention risks: 92% of workers say culture influences whether they stay, and 39% of Millennials and Gen Z say it impacts them “a great deal” (EY, 2022). If you think top talent will stay in a culture of secrecy and silence, think again.

The Generational Push for Change

Corporate media, especially the legacy kind, has long operated like a castle:
Information guarded. Power centralized. Only a few trusted to know what’s really going on.

But castles don’t scale. Networks do.

If we want to build companies that actually last, if we want to lead teams that don’t just survive but evolve, we have to share the damn playbook.

Baby Boomers and Gen X often climbed the ranks in “knowledge is power” cultures.
But Millennials and Gen Z?
They’re not having it.

They demand transparency. Collaboration. Psychological safety.
And when they don’t see it?
They don’t wait around to change the system, they leave it.

Gen Z especially has a sharp BS-detector. They don’t trust polished town halls with no real access. They want vulnerability, honesty, and action. If leadership gatekeeps the truth, about strategy, performance, even values, younger employees will walk.

The takeaway? Transparency is no longer optional. What might have been “business as usual” is seen as unacceptable by younger employees. The new workforce is challenging leaders to step up, and create a culture of trust. And frankly, that’s a good thing. Siloed, fear-based cultures should become a relic of the past if we want organizations that innovate and attract top talent.

The Fix: Courageous Knowledge Sharing

Breaking a gatekeeping culture requires courageous leadership. It means those at the top (and frankly, all of us) deciding to share the full playbook instead of keeping secrets. Easier said than done, I know — it can feel scary to tear down silos when that’s the way things have “always been done.” But it’s absolutely possible. Here are some strategies I’ve found effective for fostering an open, collaborative culture:

• Break the silos by design. Centralize data. Build systems for shared insight. I created internal trackers, shared revenue reports, and resource guides accessible org-wide. Don’t leave knowledge sharing to chance, bake it into your systems.

• Share what works and what doesn’t. Normalize talking about failures. In my team meetings, we always did post-mortems. Wins and flops. That’s how we got better.

• Make leadership visible and accessible. No one trusts a ghost. Skip the sanitized updates — do live Q&As, host skip-level chats, walk the floor. People need access to the “why,” not just the “what.”

• Host regular “open knowledge” sessions. Monthly cross-functional forums where people share lessons, blockers, and insights. It doesn’t need to be fancy, just consistent and inclusive. Add lunch if you’re in-office. No hierarchy. Just shared learning.

• Empower quiet voices. In fear-based cultures, the smartest people go silent. Not because they lack ideas, but because speaking up got them punished. That’s why psychological safety matters. Make it safe to tell the truth and create systems to elevate those voices.

The Principle

At the end of the day, it boils down to a simple principle: Progress comes from sharing context, not hoarding power.

Real leadership is about multiplying knowledge. It lifts the room. It says: here’s what I know, now let’s build better, together.

The strongest leaders I know are not threatened by empowering others, they’re energized by it. They actively invite diverse perspectives into the conversation. They share information freely, trusting that an informed team will outperform an ignorant one every time. They understand that power isn’t a zero-sum game; lifting others up doesn’t push you down, it raises the whole tide.

You don’t need more rockstars.

You need teammates who trust each other with the full picture.

Because when we hoard, we shrink.

But when we share, we scale.

So today, I’m asking you:
What knowledge are you sitting on that could unlock someone else’s brilliance?

Tear down a gate this week.
Open a door.
Share the playbook.

The future doesn’t belong to the people who know the most. It belongs to the ones who share what they know.

With courage,

Maryam

Sources:

1. Zhao, S. et al. (2021). Knowledge sharing direction and innovation performance in organizations. European Journal of Innovation Management, 24(2), 371–394.

2. Forrester Consulting (2022). The Crisis of Fractured Organizations.

3. Gallup (2022, 2023). State of the Global Workplace Reports – Employee engagement and productivity findings.

4. EY (2022). US Generation Survey – Impact of company culture on retention and DEI expectations.

5. Tallo (2023). Gen Z in the Workplace Survey – Diversity, equity, and inclusion findings.

6. Harvard Business Review (2021). What Psychological Safety Looks Like in a Hybrid Workplace – statistics on collaboration and productivity.