I find strange that when people complain about HiPPO decision making, very often, they are proposing to replace it with "little hippo": instead of one big bosses, a bunch of little bosses reigning in their own little fiefs. That's kind of Dark Ages is no better than HiPPO, and it is more than certainly a sign that the reality is that those people are more frustrated to not be the HiPPO themselves rather than by the HiPPO itself.