Good points but nowhere close to why this happens most of the time. I can't see how sentence phrasing can cause a whole project to go in a direction it was not

Good points but nowhere close to why this happens most of the time. I can't see how sentence phrasing can cause a whole project to go in a direction it was not intended for. Often times the people most active in these white paper discussions are non-technical people who don't do any actual work rather than running from meeting to meeting who are trying to get in their two cents to show how valuable they are. At the end of the day - this creates an atmosphere for the PM to shine and the Engineer to take a backseat. Maybe it's different in more technical parts of the company but this is the dynamic in Finance/Legal/HR.