Heh, it sounds like the problem could be lack of leadership.
It doesn't have to be an official "leader". It could be a coordinator, liason, or whatever you want to call it. Ultimately there needs to be someone examing how the group is interacting together. If many people in a group are making mistakes, then ultimately it's the leader's responsibility to get the group back on course. Or if one activity is going to affect someone in another discipline, then the liason needs to communicate with that other person.
If a project requires multiple people to complete, then ultimately someone needs to ensure that everyone is working toward the same appropriate goal. So yes, the "leader" does need to be there to see the big picture.
Many things work better in a self-organizing format. Certainly having a "leader" is great to place blame on ("a single wring-able neck"), but often they are for show only.
Yes, I am saying it is
impossible to expect a leader to be able to do what you are suggesting in many cases.
Say in microhip design, the Architects understand the architecture, the microarchtiects understand the microarchitecture, the RTL folks understand the RTL, the circuit designers understand the circuits, the package designers understand the package, Signal Integrity people understand the PC board interactions, the test folks understand the testing, the device engineers understand the device physics, the manufacturing people understand the manufacturing, the firmware people understand the firmware, the software people understand the software, the automation people understand the automation, the lithography people understand the lithography, and on and on.
Most of the bugs we uncover are very subtle, and intricate. To say that some "big-picture" person should take care of such things is preposterous in my mind. The bugs however, show-up heavily in the "seams" (and there are always seems no matter how many "liasons" you add). Certainly shifting resources to reduce where bugs come from is within the scope of a manager or "leader," but closing the "seams" between the part I own and the parts that other people own is my responsibility.
A similar situation occurs in the world society/economy/whatever. What is it that keeps it running? There are a lot of problems with it, but I still generally get what I pay for, and have a job, and I get running water, and electricity, and can get various services from medical to automotive. The same is true for most people in developed world.
Should we hope for some "leader" of the world who would fix the worlds problems? Or should we be trying our best to fix the problems we see in ways that we deem achievable?
I wouldn't doubt this is your experience, because most leaders attain their position without any regard toward the leadership ability they possess. Leadership is a usually part of a promotion, because the person did a good job in their previous position. They may or may not actually be a good leader. This is often not part of the consideration process. People are usually promoted to their level of incompetence as the saying goes.
This is part of the problem, sure. But, unfortunately things aren't always so simple. Which part of the elephant is the real elephant? Even saying "the side" isn't accurate. It is impossible to see the whole elephant (If your' thinking of some system of mirrors, remember it has insides, and CAT scans miss stuff too).
Whatever the case about leadership, I hope I succeeded in showing some of the range of the question posed in the OP, and that differences in opinion of the lessons learned are in-fact non-trivial in many cases.
The question still pertains to the
personal lessons in these situations. If we believe the problem is a lack of leadership, what is the lesson we take form the "mistake," and more importantly, what do we do about it?