You’re absolutely right that the tactics should generally come from the smart, motivated employees. However, the senior leaders need mechanisms to make the general directions believable and understandable by the lower-level leaders. Sometimes this is built-in to weekly product discussions and a good relationship across levels of the org. Sometimes this is targeted micromanagement or spot-checks of detailed decisions.
For a lot of orgs moving from “move fast and break things” to “move kinda fast and avoid breaking these things”, SVP and CxO participation in post-mortem reviews, launch-readiness reports, and customer-usage investigations are good ways for them to clarify and reinforce the change in tradeoffs they mean with their vision and strategy statements.
You’re absolutely right that the tactics should generally come from the smart, motivated employees. However, the senior leaders need mechanisms to make the general directions believable and understandable by the lower-level leaders. Sometimes this is built-in to weekly product discussions and a good relationship across levels of the org. Sometimes this is targeted micromanagement or spot-checks of detailed decisions.
For a lot of orgs moving from “move fast and break things” to “move kinda fast and avoid breaking these things”, SVP and CxO participation in post-mortem reviews, launch-readiness reports, and customer-usage investigations are good ways for them to clarify and reinforce the change in tradeoffs they mean with their vision and strategy statements.