[blamestross]

This is all built on a premise that kinda scares me. Its not a new idea, it's one I have participated in my entire career. That concentration of power at the top labeled "why". It doesn't actually make sense, it just gives the people with power a narrative of security. "Why" should be a conversation up and down the org chart. If "what" doesn't come with why, you make the wrong "what". If "how" doesn't come with "why" you sabotage yourself. If your "why" can't survive effective communication and context, it was probably a bad call. If you feel like you "need to go fast" you are just gambling and looking at the world with survivorship bias.

Every engineering decision and debate I have seen has always boiled down to 2 things "people don't know the motivation for an action" and "people have incomplete knowledge of the situation". Normally both. Every single conversation, when poised in a "this is the high level goal" context, went from a debate to a constructive design session in seconds.

Failure to "propagate the why" is a tar-pit for execution and decision making.