[jhinra]

> whether that leader is deemed to be in the first case or the second case will be a matter of opinion mostly.

Respectfully, I disagree. One scenario results in a plan, one doesn't, and that's a core distinction between the two scenarios. Whether it's a good plan or not is a subject of opinion, but its presence or absence is not.

> you’ll be internally persecuted for saying so, no matter how diplomatically.

That's not true in my experience. It sounds like you've worked in some pretty rough places!

[mlthoughts2018]

Not really. I’ve worked in three large publicly traded ecommerce companies that are household names, one large education tech company, two startups and a defense research lab after grad school.

All of them were identical in this regard. What defines a “good plan” or what qualifies as “good leadership” is fully subjective and at the discretion of leaders most interested in entrenching their power.

This also has a lot of research behind it, eg like in the book Moral Mazes.

The description you give sounds like an extreme outlier that doesn’t have relevance for that vast majority of modern workplaces.