I was thinking about all this recently and came up with the question:
In the event that someone fails, is it possible for it to be you?
There are people who cannot fail at their jobs. I want one of those jobs. An upper manager who attends meetings and "makes decisions" and is personal friends with the CEO often cannot fail. If the product stops selling, it will be considered a failure of those below the upper manager and the team will be laid off, the upper manager cannot fail.
A friend recently took a job in a company with more managers than employees. Example: one department has a VP managing a director managing 2 reports. One of the reports has more experience than the VP and director (combined.) The VP has no other reports. It's truly absurd.
In a properly functioning organization, a leader takes responsibility for the everything that happens on their watch, not just the successes but the failures as well. Even if an underling actually did something to cause a failure, the supervisor put them in the position where they could cause failure, kept them there, and failed to put into place the precautions to prevent that failure. Obviously many organizations don't work like this, but for success-motivated people it is very draining to work in such an environment, especially for long enough to get to the high levels where you could potentially benefit from its dysfunction.
In the event that someone fails, is it possible for it to be you?
There are people who cannot fail at their jobs. I want one of those jobs. An upper manager who attends meetings and "makes decisions" and is personal friends with the CEO often cannot fail. If the product stops selling, it will be considered a failure of those below the upper manager and the team will be laid off, the upper manager cannot fail.