Or, consequences of lossy compression as information gets summarized before being transmitted up the management ladder.
And it isn't always a bad management call! Sometimes they're making the right call on the data they have, but they're missing critical data.
E.g. Not realizing that 1/5 a store needs to be used for ad hoc inventory because too much product was flooded during holidays, ergo it cannibalizes display space, ergo the sales rates of various SKUs are all out of whack (to come up with a contrived example)
I get it, at some point you have to admit that you're not going to get 100% truth from people. But that doesn't mean you don't talk to different people at different layers of the company.
This clip always resonated with me, re: high level leadership: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gguxM8eABP8 (as context, one subordinate he's talking about is presented as a terrible leader, the other as a great one)
Specifically, the point being made that all information is... uncertain. And how a good leader makes good decisions within that uncertainty, instead of picking winners.
It's easy to make the right decision when you have all the facts, but you can't have all the facts when you need to make 15+ decisions in a day.
The only solution was to take an entire day from the CEO to figure out that the goals were unrealistic? Wasn't the very first clue that stores were generally unable to meet the expected attach rates?
It just highlights this dumb idea that executives are these ungodly force multipliers. I bet if anyone had bothered to ask the day-to-day labor about the proposed attach rates (and actually listened) they wouldn't have had to burn a day's worth of CEO compensation to figure out they weren't achievable.
One of the ones I personally witnessed related to the services that salespeople were expected to sell along with the computers. There was some kerfuffle going on about stores not meeting the expected "attach rates". He spent a whole day selling computers, and could not meet the expected attach rates himself. Couple weeks after that changes to pricing and program benefits were announced. I later learned that the need for changes had become a very high priority the same day as his visit.