The alternative of having collaborative decision making has its own downsides, of being slower, not meeting goals, and sometimes producing conflicting outputs.

The alternative of having collaborative decision making has its own downsides, of being slower, not meeting goals, and sometimes producing conflicting outputs. In reality, a "directive" can be generalized to any "process request", such as a software enhancement request. A "goal level" statement must be described, and then someone between the implementer and the manager needs to flesh out and escalate what the functionality looks like and any potential conflicts. ...then the person implementing them needs to translate that spec into an implementation, and then escalate any potential unintended consequences found in testing phase. ...and all of this in an iterative cycle. Unfortunately, 99% of office requests do no merit enough _value_ for this process to be worthwhile. With infinite resources, we can achieve infinite perfection in every management request. ...but in the real world where business demands are transient, the expectation should be that management doesn't know what they want all the time and asks for things with incorrect parameters and conditions. ...and so the implementer (since there's no one in between) needs to bring their industry experience and communication skills to _poignantly_ explain the caveats in the request and explain what the alternatives are. These are difficult conversations to have. They inherently contain conflict and the emotions of frustration associated with the manager perceiving that they aren't getting what they want, and the implementer being asked to break protocols and safeguards. There is no perfect solution. This comes down to professionalism and having employees and managers that are able to offer compromise, have dispassionate discourse, and be willing to thoughtfully approach the problem in succinct and timely fashion. ...which is why hiring experienced intelligent emotionally stable people is the most productive choice for companies.