The reason for decisions to happen at the team level is agility plain and simple. This applies even to strategic decisions, which are best made collaboratively at the executive-team (they are a team) level with input from the rest of the org. 1/5

If a decision doesn't happen at the place the work is done, the entire process slows down, sometimes to a crawl. 2/5

That delay, in turns, vastly increases the odds of the decision being a wrong one, both because of the telephone/whispers problem but also because the feedback loop is no longer swift or short enough. 3/5

Adding a "manager" to the equation also adds politics and moves the focus away from the customer/user. Finally, decisions made up the hierarchy are single points of failure. Collaborative decisions are almost always better ones. 4/5

If the organization is so dysfunctional that true collaborative decision making can't happen, it can't really be Agile at all, so I don't see that as a valid critique of this last point. Agile is for grownups. Trust is a key Agile value. 5/5