It is perhaps possible to interpret these articles as saying anything whatsoever, but they don't seem to specifically say what Paul's article says.
As with any complex system, you have to be careful about degrees of freedom, too many and it can break down and too little and it can get seized.
I think the founder not only motivates people to work on the correct thing by doing this, but the founder also directly experiences feedback from working with people lower on the org chart, enabling them to steer the company with more accurate information.
To my mind the CEO job at scale is 4 things - Keeping the fight fair-- The leadership and executive management should argue viciously, The CEO should make sure these conflicts remain constructive and aligned with company goals
Holding the vision true-- There's a risk of mission drift, continually reinforce and refine the company's vision, make sure all leaders remain aligned with longterm goals
Enforcing strategic adherence-- A strategy is only as good as its execution. ensure the leadership team not only understands the strategy but implements it across all levels of the organization. Manager of Leaders
Deal with the real world-- Q-calls, investor relations, supply chains/vendors/etc.
This is often the problem I have with business advice, it's general but not generally applicable. Scale matters probably most in the context, followed by the type of business.
At the least, they said you need to hear directly from the people on the ground to know what they’re experiencing. The people on top could talk to them about what they learned.
Additionally, companies like IBM and FedEx used to give rewards to employees for ideas to improve the company. It was often a percentage of what those ideas made or saved up to a certain cap. A bunch of people would usually collect the max reward whenever this way implemented.
Those are a few examples that I saw show up in many places.
