Your mention of “upper management” engagement in decisions seems counter to what I hear all the time, about an (upper) management philosophy of “getting out of the way” to “empower” “people close to the ground” and “delegate decision making”

And yet, I am with you: shouldn’t the top (smartest?) people be closely involved “in the weeds”? It seems like “design dictators” [from another comment] and such could actually make the org’s products a lot better. Which seems to be the philosophy at Apple: “experts leading experts” – as a reply here says, and the article in [1].

Thoughts anyone?

[1] https://hbr.org/2020/11/how-apple-is-organized-for-innovatio...