Brilliant article, Richard! It is so important that an organization embrace these concepts. I have worked with individuals within organizations along these lines, but so often they are swimming against the current.

One crucial weakness in managers being subject matter experts is that when there is a big problem with a project, they tend to take over to come up with a solution, instead of helping others come up with their solution. I’ve seen multiple functional heads take over for, or interfere with, their direct reports and completely F things up. The project team was left demoralized and emasculated, and when the managers effectively said, “Alright, you can take it from here now”, it was pretty much a lost cause.