Leadership is broken
Leadership is broke. The hierarchical system is simply wrong, dated, and full of mistaken assumptions.
See, it was alright to have a leader back in the Middle Ages, or a hundred years ago, when only a few were taught, educated and trained.
In a strictly class system like that, hierarchical organization makes sense, because the resources of the social group have all gone to big monumental works, and wars. Hence, only a few are educated, healthy and knowledgeable.
This has changed: now we have enormous armies of trained professionals, incredibly sophisticated researchers, and easy access to resources, all of which means that people should have a more active role than what they have had up to now.
Nowadays, teams are incredibly competitive, yet they remain expecting something to happen, trapped in a cascade of responsibilities, and completely disconnected from the final result and objective-setting of major enterprises.
The result is inefficiencies, missed opportunities, and lack of agility that has plagued so many corporations. Corporations and enterprises with a rigid hierarchy become liable to changing circumstances and business environments, whereas the flexible ones, even the informally flexible, the ones with strong subversive networks, are more apt at navigating a changing landscape of opportunities.
This post inspired by Brain Dump on the system vs the Command and Control structure: