Leading product in enterprise is different. The debate between top-down planning and bottom-up empowerment is a false choice. You need both, and the ratio matters less than the clarity.

Planning creates alignment: where we're going, what bets we're making, which problems matter most. Empowerment creates speed: teams making daily decisions without waiting for approval. The failure mode isn't choosing wrong. It's being unclear about which is which. Teams need to know what's fixed (the problem we're solving, the outcome we need) versus what's flexible (how we get there, what we try first).

The best operating models make the boundaries explicit. Everything else becomes noise.