Lots of things here so my response is going to be a little jumbled :) Yeah, regression to mean definitely a thing. It can topple justifiably confident people a

Lots of things here so my response is going to be a little jumbled :) Yeah, regression to mean definitely a thing. It can topple justifiably confident people and/or prop up frauds. In my experience, decision by committee has never worked when times are tough. When times are tough you just need to be able to trust your leadership to know what they are doing and not micro manage them (and not have them micro-manage you). When times aren't tough, then anything will work :) Really, there is no such thing as full-disclosure of information or decision-making. But, you should have full-disclosure of goals so everyone is pushing in the same direction. Your CEO will have info you don't have. Second-guessing him when times are tough will just lead to poison. And anyway, even in decision by committee you'll have people who exude confidence being able to sell their ideas better etcs. They will just do so with no accountability. I'm not sure people tolerate setbacks any better in the long-term regardless of whether they were part of the decision or not. Humans are revisionists. I've definitely heard comments in the line of "He's the CEO, why is he asking us?" and "I said that would happen. " when things are going bad. I think of "confidence" as complexity-hiding rather than information-hiding. Basically, it's saying "you can trust me to do my job. Worry about yours." At the end of the day, working in any team is going to be based on how much you can trust everyone else to do their jobs. If you can't, time to move on.