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I recently read Barry Lam's excellent pamphlet Fewer Laws, Better People, which has a similar theme around increasing discretion granted rather than focusing on formal discretion-free rules, so that is influencing my thoughts on this. I highly recommend the book
Two thoughts about what accountability means.
"Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." When you make people accountable for their decisions, you encourage conservatism. You target not their results, because nobody totally controls results, you can only punish them for bad process. And this leads to conservative process. You stick with the big reputation contractor, you never take a risk or do anything bold. Defensive medicine. Follow the procedure, check the boxes, and whatever happens happens. We don't like this result.
On the other hand, people point to internal loci of control, we need people to want to act with excellence, with skin in the game. But think of War and Peace, of the Grand Armee marching into Russia. If Kutuzov had been held accountable for the loss of Moscow, we'd all be speaking French. Every other general was worried about being held accountable socially, of being judged a coward. Kutuzov alone was willing to take on the social opprobrium of being judged a coward, of losing Moscow, of running away from Napoleon. Napoleon expected Kutuzov to act like every other brave general he'd faced, afraid of being held accountable, when the right decision was to behave like a coward.
The important thing is to pick the right people, and trust them. Give them discretion to achieve their goals. And then hope for the best.
I always think it's worth noting that out of all the kings of Israel in the bible, there are maybe three and a half good ones. Out of 70-some Roman emperors, only perhaps a dozen were any good. Out of 43 presidents, the majority were pretty mid. Ditto kings of England, or France, or Ottoman Sultans, or Chinese Emperors. History consists mostly of mediocrities, a single great leader sets up the system and everyone coasts off that for dozens or hundreds or thousands of years.
This doesnt really affect your argument, but your example with Kutuzov is really funny: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Andreas_Barclay_de_Tolly#Napoleon's_invasion. In short, Kutuzov continued Barcley de Tolly strategy, but also had fortune of being ethnic russian.
That's why I cited to Tolstoy specifically, rather than the always contested and complicated historical record.
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