who is really in charge?

A business owner this week told me that he was trying to get his wife to accept his decision. A CEO told me that he wanted to get buy-in from his team. Now I am certainly not opposed to business owners speaking with their wives nor CEO's talking to their teams provided of course that they remain in charge and do not end up abdicating the decision making process. While these members of a business are certainly "key players" their perspective is not always as clear nor as wide as the primary visionary of a company. That said, exercise caution.
In Russia their was a man, you probably heard of called Rasputin. He gained favor with the Czar and his Queen by curing their ailing son. We could say that in this role, Rasputin although weird, was doing no real harm. However it was not long before he was being consulted on almost every decision the Czar was making: unfortunately for the royal family Rasputin might have been a healer but his political prowess was sorely lacking and to cut along story short the entire family found themselves all up against a wall after the revolution.
So does your business have a clear leader. Do you know who it is and does everyone in your organization know who it is. Often we see large companies that cannot get out of their own way to get something done.
And if you are trying to sell into these companies beware of the Rasputin's that can sabotage even the greatest of ideas by removing any real decision making power from the Czar.