I'm so glad that I just stumbled across this comment. I'm a career military officer who has served on big, upper-echelon staffs that were stunningly disorganize

I'm so glad that I just stumbled across this comment. I'm a career military officer who has served on big, upper-echelon staffs that were stunningly disorganized and dysfunctional. You nailed it with this description of how things really work. I always said that people were busy - there was a frenzy activity - but nothing ever got done until someone very senior (i.e the commanding general or one of his deputy commanders) stepped in, like you said, and made a decision from his gut that a particular thing needed to get done, and then everybody would actively work on that one thing and nobody's work would be blocked. Eventually I realized that the game for stakeholders was all about getting their things into a decision briefing for the commander to make that happen.