> Or you could just hire responsible people and ask them to use their judgement
If you know a fail-safe way of only hiring responsible people who always have good judgment... then I hope you're being paid millions of dollars in consulting fees, because nobody has really figured that one out in a general way yet!! :)
Also, those people tend to be expensive... sometimes it's far more cost-efficient to hire less-perfect people, but put rules in place to minimize any catastrophic damage they can create, at the expense of efficiency.
Following the rules to the letter also produces bad outcomes.
The issue is not that using judgement is perfect it's that using judgement usually produces a better outcome than blindly following a rule.
Yes, rules should be put in place for the most extraordinary circumstances or places that good judgement is known to fail. The rule has to prevent the bad thing to be effective while also not creating something worse.
In this case, there was someone with basically good judgement, but they were operating from high within their hierarchical framework, which inherently induces delays. In retrospect, Philip, David, or both, should have been copied on the ticket and directly overseen the policy violation that they deliberately set in motion.
Simply ordering policy violations from the throne doesn't work in practice. Either the person who made the decision or a trusted lieutenant who understands what's going on has to see it through to the end, otherwise the bureaucracy in the middle will simply continue on its preprogrammed course.
If you know a fail-safe way of only hiring responsible people who always have good judgment... then I hope you're being paid millions of dollars in consulting fees, because nobody has really figured that one out in a general way yet!! :)
Also, those people tend to be expensive... sometimes it's far more cost-efficient to hire less-perfect people, but put rules in place to minimize any catastrophic damage they can create, at the expense of efficiency.