> When this happens, leadership should back these initiatives.
this requires trust in the "low-level" people. It also implies that the "low-level" people have sufficient power at their call to execute those initiatives, without directly involving the leadership.
This works if leadership is not under threat from the low-level people (e.g., in a democracy, where your survival is not contingent on kinship with the military's cooperation).
> He trusted his subordinates and won.
So this is why i suspect this does not work in most modern organizations : the leadership does not (or cannot) trust their subordinates to make the correct choices. In other words, the leadership doesn't want to cop the cost of a wrong decision in the hands of the "low-level" people, and insist on seeing evidence/plan/etc (which basically means they're not really deligating the decision down, but pushing the decisions up!).
The Roman Army also left a lot of decision power to their lower levels, at least on a tactical level. They most definitely were not a democracy in the modern sense.
this requires trust in the "low-level" people. It also implies that the "low-level" people have sufficient power at their call to execute those initiatives, without directly involving the leadership.
This works if leadership is not under threat from the low-level people (e.g., in a democracy, where your survival is not contingent on kinship with the military's cooperation).
> He trusted his subordinates and won.
So this is why i suspect this does not work in most modern organizations : the leadership does not (or cannot) trust their subordinates to make the correct choices. In other words, the leadership doesn't want to cop the cost of a wrong decision in the hands of the "low-level" people, and insist on seeing evidence/plan/etc (which basically means they're not really deligating the decision down, but pushing the decisions up!).