[sophistication]

The processes are also designed such that people do not feel overstepped and ignored. After all, most things in life are about social status, or more immediately about salary status and job position.

If someone secretly implements an awesome feature, others might be envious as it does not seem deserved if their idea did not receive the same level of scrutiny by the usual processes as other decisions did.

Theoretically, it probably won't cause much chaos at all if programmers are allowed to add small GUI tweaks and the product likely benefits from it.

The degree to which this would work probably depends a lot on the extent to which the programmers have reached Kegan level 5, so practically it probably won't work all that well.

http://i.imgur.com/K4AVFbW.png

[sidlls]

It's pretty rare for someone to secretly implement an awesome feature. Usually the way that works is as you hint at: someone who already has high social status in the organization gets a lot of leeway to do his own thing while everyone else is constrained to the usual process.

The envy isn't about the awesome feature: it's about the fact that this developer gets even more attention and positive notice from leadership by means that aren't available to other workers due to social status (rather than merit).