I had this same realization. In this context it doesn't work as well, anyway, because senior leaders are in meetings so often that their desk is fairly meaningless.

But to generalize at a higher level -- "by what mechanism do we force management to be decent?" -- the only one I've discovered is to be willing to leave jobs that have management practices that one doesn't agree with.

Unfortunately that advice doesn't work in the general case -- mobility is relatively easy for developers but we don't make up a large part of the population. I feel like the right answer is some changes in our social structure or economy that makes job mobility much (much) easier. Like a BI/Negative Income Tax, or free education, etc.