Is "top down" a company size thing? Very simple organisms don't need brains or nervous systems. But once they get big and complex, suddenly there's a need for s

Is "top down" a company size thing? Very simple organisms don't need brains or nervous systems. But once they get big and complex, suddenly there's a need for sensors, messages, plumbing networks for transporting signals and matter. That doesn't evolve as a decentralized system. You quickly need a control centre to oversee operations. Companies are no different. During company growth, it's all about hiring, and giving tasks and some responsibilities to subordinates, setting up the right channels for communication etc. But at what point do company leadership actually say "You know what,that department would work better without direct instructions from us. Let's facilitate communication, act as conflict adjudicators and make company-wide 'North Star' decisions" I think that's what OKRs are supposed to do, but I've never seen that work well (for very long anyway). It always gets up-ended somehow. Start of quarter optimism, over-promising, not spotting that someone else's stretch goal is actually your blocker. Then mid-quarter you're dealing with production emergencies, database code red and running out of time. At the end of the quarter, two of your team go off on PTO while you desperately try not to "fail your quarter", working late, and delivering shoddy work. Does true bottom up exist at large companies? Hmmm. Some. We've all heard the legends of IBM's "build the first PC!" skunkworks. And we know about research-only departments at Xerox that led to so many modern computing inventions. But these were brief projects. I find these days that people have the desire to get out of the way and let us work, but the tiling is in the way. I waste so much fixing time in Jira, slack, doing performance reviews, interviewing...