Interesting. While I really enjoyed the post, something that stuck out for me was: what if they don't apply your philosophy as you expect? Isn't this how great companies fall down, when the founder's philosophy is lost and replaced by internal politics? Some how you should be able to review the decisions being made without having to waste even more time doing the review.
I think there's a fundamental difference between being a "manager" and being a "doer".
If you're a "doer" (for example, a developer) your to-do list for today is likely to have three or four items on it - each a couple of hours in length - and context switches (interruptions, changing task) are expensive (half an hour or so).
If you're a manager, your to-do list is actually about a hundred items long - but each item only takes a few minutes to complete (also meaning that it's probably not written down and it's hard to enumerate what you actually did today). And most importantly - context switches are cheap.
So reviewing someone else's work is actually only a ten minute job (it doesn't need to be detailed - just check to see if it fits with your philosophy).
But for a developer that's ten minutes plus an hour of context switching - making it very expensive.
For a manager that's ten minutes, plus a minute of context switching - making it cheap.
