> The problem with permission is that you are implicitly asking someone else to take some responsibility for your decision. You aren’t inviting them to participate in its success — permission is hardly seen as a value adding behavior — but if it goes wrong you might end up involving them in the failure: “Hey, I asked that team and they said it was fine.”

I can see where that's coming from but that statement conflates many problems into one and sounds like the author has the opposite problem of just wanting mostly credit and not accountability?

- Many people who ask for permissions are genuinely asking for permissions to be given the chance to _try_ something that they believe may be the correct solution. You'd only be in the position to say now if you have the authority to do so: if you say yes, then you'd better be comfortable with being accountable for saying yes because... they trust your opinion enough to ask you in the first place? If you say no, chances are they will respect your opinion and suddenly it's no longer about permission because chances are, in a professional setting, they just won't do it because they trust your experience.

- If you work with people who only blame you for failures and don't acknowledge you for success, then it's a different problem? Anecdotal: the last job I had people rarely say "I asked [someone] and they said it was fine” — even if it's said exactly like that it's rarely about blaming someone else but more about adding context so that we can all come together to find a better solution (a lot of things get lost in translation especially when people with less experienced but well-meaning are involved). I do feel sorry for anyone who works in an environment where everyone is just trying to offload responsibilities onto someone else.

- If you're in a position to give permissions, then shouldn't you do that _and_ take some responsibilities for it even when the person asking don't expect you to do so? I don't think it's right for people asking for permissions use that as a means to offload responsibilities, but I also don't think it's right for people who are in the position to authorise someone asking for permission to do something to not hold themselves accountable?

- Following from the above, if someone is asking you for advice, then chances are you are not one to give them permission to do something but they respect your opinions, or they want to draw that boundary extra clear (again, just because someone is asking for permission doesn't mean they want to hold you accountable): shouldn't any reasonable person giving advice still hold themselves accountable for the advice they give?

- There is nothing stopping people who ask for advice from you offloading just as much responsibilities onto you than if they were to ask for permission. People who want to offload responsibilities will always find a way to do that — and it doesn't matter whether they asked for permission or advice.

- If it's not something that someone can just go ahead and do, even if they ask you for advice instead of permission, they still have to ask for permission elsewhere?

It's great if you are in a position of power where people come to you for both advice and permissions. If you're someone's manager then you'd better be prepared to give permissions and hold yourself accountable; otherwise, you'd still better be prepared to hold yourself accountable to the advice you give.