LOL [grin]
OK, fair enough, but then what if the guards find that door open?
What if its lock is trapped with a silent alarm (Again, alerting guards).

I suppose I am pulling this thread OT, so I'll stop, but as I said before, I just think it's up to you the writer to make things interesting.
Inanimate obstacles as you define them seem rather irrelevant, but you can always make them matter by tying them to "animate obstacles"...

But if you do so, you are then looping back to "animate obstacles".

Moreover, unless it is part of Nature itself, I tend to envision furniture and walls as a part of the "animate obstacle", since it has been placed by an animate opponent. A door has been locked by someone. A barrier has been raised by someone. That hole has been dug by someone. And all the time, you are doing your best to overcome the efforts of that person.

Now if you were trying to blast that great cliff, no one created that cliff. It can be then safely put in the "inanimate obstacle" section. If you are trying to cross that abysmal canyon, it's likely that no one actually took to the pain to dig it, unless you refer to ancient Lore. Even when you try to go through the Rockies and the Appalaches, you are not trying to defeat traps set up by Paul Bunyan, because he is suppose to have created them while playing with Babe, his ox, or bull, I can't remember which, and was, at the time, NOT thinking about you. There HAS to be a will in an obstacle, be it an exterior will, for it to become an "animate obstacle". Sometimes, you fight people who have absolutely no desire of fighting you, but have to, because they are soldiers, or competitors. And sometimes, you just happen to make your best through coincidental causes, which just happen to be, with no particular design behind them.

My girlfriend lives with a handicap, and although she "happened" by accident, and although her father had the very same handicap as she does, she can't be said to fight through her life against the will of her father, who gave her that life and handicap to have fun seeing her having difficulties. The handicap is "inanimate". But when she tries to, say, get a job, she experiences difficulties, not because of her handicap, but because of the way people see the handicap. The obstacle is "animate", and it is not the handicap, but other people, trying to keep her off.

As for the "animate obstacles" a wannabe leader might have to overcome, I can imagine three:
Rivals
Trials set up by tradition or by judge.
Lack of will of the people he is supposed to lead.

A man wants to be leader, but...

Last night was his stag party, and he has been tied to a lamppost with only a rubber sheep for company, he has to be on duty in four hours time.

But> He has to get off the lamppost.
He needs to find something to cover his nudity,
He needs to get into his house unseen.
His car isn't working. He needs to get a taxi, but his mobile phone is out of credit.

(If he is seen he may lose all respect and dash his chances of becoming leader.)