> I think this situation would've happened regardless of advice vs permission.
I don't think so. If you have a process in place where everyone can and should be heard during the design process and once the design is approved it is owned by everyone and everyone is obligated to fully commit to it, you prevent the sociopaths within your ranks from weaseling out and throw anyone under the bus. You eliminate the motivation to steer people in your team down a bad path to afterwards portray yourself as the only sane, competent guy in the ranks, because you have to explicitly sign off on the project. Once you sign off on the project, any extraordinary miraculous epiphany that happens after the fact is something that you must be held liable for, because it becomes obvious that you were never acting on behalf of the team's best interests. Therefore this sociopath move is no longer something that benefits you, and so the perverse incentives to screw over your team members is no longer there.
I don't think so. If you have a process in place where everyone can and should be heard during the design process and once the design is approved it is owned by everyone and everyone is obligated to fully commit to it, you prevent the sociopaths within your ranks from weaseling out and throw anyone under the bus. You eliminate the motivation to steer people in your team down a bad path to afterwards portray yourself as the only sane, competent guy in the ranks, because you have to explicitly sign off on the project. Once you sign off on the project, any extraordinary miraculous epiphany that happens after the fact is something that you must be held liable for, because it becomes obvious that you were never acting on behalf of the team's best interests. Therefore this sociopath move is no longer something that benefits you, and so the perverse incentives to screw over your team members is no longer there.