Take the one example presented in the article:
Quote:
One of the more memorable escalations occurred in late 2010. It had come to Bezos’s attention that customers who had browsed the lubricants section of Amazon’s sexual wellness category were receiving personalized e-mails pitching a variety of gels and other intimacy facilitators. When the e-mail marketing team received the question mark, they knew the topic was delicate and nervously put together an explanation. Amazon’s direct marketing tool was decentralized, and category managers could generate e-mail campaigns to customers who had looked at certain product categories but did not make purchases. The promotions tended to work; they were responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in Amazon’s annual sales. In the matter of the lubricant e-mail, though, a low-level product manager had overstepped the bounds of propriety.
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They had a process that made it easy for low-level managers to speak for the company. Too easy. It blew up in their faces. Bezos acted before it got worse.
Some things require short-circuiting normal channels; that one qualifies.
(Shrug)
A corporate CEO going nutters may be undignified but it seems to work, considering how often you see it among the most effective of managers. Maybe because it rattles middle managers out of their numeric stupor?
