This reminds me of what I've heard about MasterCard. Their CEO wanted to empower any employee to come up with good ideas. So, if an employees sends an idea to their manager and the manager doesn't respond, the employee has the right to do it. But it sounds like the recipe for a shitshow, so I'd love to know if this is really the case.
I would argue that the employees are in a better position to make the decisions than the CEO is. They have all the info right there; the CEO has either no informatipn, late infotmation, or inaccurate information.
This is similar to one of the most effective techniques I have for decision making. I send an eMail to the people or person who holds the responsibility, stating "I'm going to carry out this action tomorrow; <describe decision I've made and action I'm taking>. This is your chance to stop me."
It is fantastically effective.
"My assumption about the big vague spec document is that you currently are asking for {X} and that your end goal is {Y}, therefore I'm planning to do {Z}."