The key is that every task must have EXACTLY ONE BOSS whose say is final when a decision is necessary.
A hierarchy works fine if it really is a hierarchy. It won’t work if the hierarchy has been poisoned with “dotted lines” or lots of unnecessarily-senior-sounding job titles that let senior people share control over project direction. I’ve worked in groups in the past where there were like 5 senior people trying to pull things in completely different directions, no one would tell us whose opinion really mattered, and we kept having to decide for ourselves.
Eh. At every large company I've worked in or with, even if there's officially one boss, the reality is it's a committee. Worse, when in the middle of a big organization, you're never really sure who has authority. Someone lower on the org chart might call their friend who is an SVP from some other branch of the company, they fly in to have their say... it's all politics, no matter what the org chart says.
A hierarchy works fine if it really is a hierarchy. It won’t work if the hierarchy has been poisoned with “dotted lines” or lots of unnecessarily-senior-sounding job titles that let senior people share control over project direction. I’ve worked in groups in the past where there were like 5 senior people trying to pull things in completely different directions, no one would tell us whose opinion really mattered, and we kept having to decide for ourselves.