I think some of the other replies don't quite get your do-it-in-secret concept, but I completely understand what you imply, it isn't so much that you're advocat

I think some of the other replies don't quite get your do-it-in-secret concept, but I completely understand what you imply, it isn't so much that you're advocating a complete rewrite of a codebase (or at least, not just that). I think you're talking about entire build out and a conceptualization of an entire system that comes from a single narrative, and is thus, coherent. I have witnessed this in others and done this myself in various projects, and you could say it was a hack, or maybe it was making a whole bunch of decisions with various scripts or procedures, but without letting anyone know that it could be an issue until you had just went and done all of it because you were simply too tired of all the bitching and other (actually really great) competing suggestions. I think that's perfectly fine if it moves things forward, and can be a great help to a climate of dysfunction, but you can't fuck it up, so it would be like a very very last resort thing possibly.