[nugget]

One manager's decision can make the work of hundreds of people worthless or even destructive. I've lived thru and seen it. Like it or not the shot callers at the top wield enormous influence and the ones who make consistently good decisions should be celebrated for that.

[jazzyk]

You are right - one bad decision can destroy a project/product.

But the opposite is not necessarily true. To ship insanely great things, you need a lot of factors to come together, not just one person's decision (although it helps).

Steve Jobs kept using ideas from the people who worked from him (presenting them later as his ideas). Yes, he had great intuition and good taste to choose the better ideas, but without the people who generated these ideas, he would have been yet another arrogant, loudmouth suit.