But does "what is" really beget "what should be?" I'm sure what you describe would be very helpful but I don't see how it could eliminate disagreements on direction.
Yeah that’s an important distinction! Iirc, the essay distinguishes between singular visionary vs decision-maker roles. A decision maker is there to break ties and contain bike shedding, and you pretty much always need one, whereas a singular visionary is really there to steer high level design decisions cohesively. There’s a spectrum here of course.
