It's permission overload if you go the other way. If you are the type of person who is comfortable going in an independent direction in a group effort, you nee

It's permission overload if you go the other way. If you are the type of person who is comfortable going in an independent direction in a group effort, you need to be able to assess the skills of those around you objectively, and you need to be able to ask good 'meet in the middle' questions when your objectivity needs re-evaluation. A team member may do what is best for one instance you observe versus the thousands of other times you ignore them following instructions in spite of the fact that they may potentially have valuable information that could be very useful for the team as a whole. >It is still possible to go for it. But you need to be accountable for the consequences. We all do. Whether it's forgiveness or permission it's still the same problem when you work on a team. > I will flag anyone that decides to "ask for forgiveness instead of permission" and notify their manager. I don't know your dynamic and I'm not pretending to. But it's pretty easy for me to say "aren't you doing exactly the same thing you are calling out?" except from a managerial perspective, instead of whatever you consider 'ground zero' to be for business decisions. > I have seen this abused. I'm sure you have, and I'm not doubting that either, and no, that's not sarcasm. I'm sure your experience is relevant, but it's important to weight your entire set of a priori information / observations / inferences and assumptions with a 'maybe that's all wrong?' perspective too, at least in my opinion. > And quite often that person feels vindicated when her solution works. Try to exist in a world where you force yourself to assume everyone is just smarter than you, because you just assume they all have more information and greater awareness in their heads than you do. People wind up judging themselves more carefully, and people wind up taking note of their errors more carefully, without it having to be explicitly pointed out to their detriment and embarrassment (IMO) Vindicated might be just another word for "thank god I finally did something unique and correct"