[danaris]

> This all, imo, is simply a trust problem primarily from leadership. Leadership does not trust the grunts to do productive work.

Which, IME, stems from a deep-seated classism that sees "grunts" today as being essentially no different than assembly-line workers in the Industrial Revolution: you're just a pair of hands who not only doesn't know enough to make changes in the process, you shouldn't even think of it, because it's not your place.

In this worldview, it's managers (and up) who have the education, intelligence, and breeding to know best, and lowly workers just need to shut up and do what they're told.

...This attitude is also responsible for a lot of other really destructive problems in the modern world of work.

[throwaway82931]

What bothers me about the rest of this thread is not that "grunts" are seen as fallible, but that management is implicitly infallible. Blaming everything on the "grunts" is irresponsible garbage in an industry where leadership, of necessity, often doesn't have a deep understanding of what's going on and the ability to make generally correct decisions with incomplete information is a critical management skill.