This makes sense in a small company context when, say, a competent CTO/CEO personally knows everyone and can resolve conflicts, bottlenecks, disfunctions quickly.
But what if a company in question is a relatively big, 1000s of employees, and something is clearly wrong in the org. Both managers and employees are friends, seemingly competent, have all the explanations at hand and all the right excuses.
i don't even think it does make sense for small companies, they can benefit hugely from setting clear, public commitments about what they're working towards
focus is one of the most important characteristics in a startup, because time is too short to waste.
I've seen this direct CTO work scale to a billion-a-year online business with hundreds of engineers :-)
Problems come when a company goes public and now there's no single personal that can accept responsibility for technical commitments. This when a decision-making system has to be put in place, and maybe a way to assess how teams are doing, etc.
But what if a company in question is a relatively big, 1000s of employees, and something is clearly wrong in the org. Both managers and employees are friends, seemingly competent, have all the explanations at hand and all the right excuses.
And nothing gets done.