As a contractor, I was definitely on some big projects where, from the perspective of an IC in the trenches, it didn't seem like anyone was in charge, or that t

As a contractor, I was definitely on some big projects where, from the perspective of an IC in the trenches, it didn't seem like anyone was in charge, or that the people in charge didn't care about it succeeding. In the two examples I'm thinking of, it's been that the client stakeholder has a lot of pull, but not a lot of experience. For example, the top Sales guy decides they want to run a little tech startup inside the company, but they've never actually launched software before. Or, someone in a load bearing role, like the head of product, knows they are out the door (usually moving up in a different, more glamorous organization) and doesn't really care to devote 60 hours a week to this dumb old company anymore.