I've always thought of this as the reality grease problem.

We need rules. Yet the infinite variety of reality creates infinite situations in which the rules are counterproductive.

Previously: the ground folks had a brain and bent/ignored certain rules in the interest of getting their job done.

The principle peril of creating a more end-to-end automated, lights-out business is that there is no longer a brain to grease the interface between c-level and reality.

And c-level is never going to admit their own mistakes.

Ergo, you're going to get a lot of command-heavy companies that plow themselves into the ground over the next 10-20 years, because the low-level people they're going to fire were performing an essential function.

(Note: the easiest escape, inasmuch as I can see one, in radically data-driven management, with frequent random shifts between analogous but independent metrics)