Semi-technical decisions, More Ways:

(You'll find my piece about making decisions just below; now it's anecdote time...)
At one time our manager sent the entire group to learn to be Empowered. The idea is simple: if only the manager can make decisions, then a large group can barely be more productive than one person. Empowered employees solve most problems on their own and pass just a few up the command chain. We came back full of excitement and proceeded to act empowered. This meant that we made decisions, the effects of which came back to our manager without having first been approved by that manager. Each of these produced an explosion of anger and discipline. We were dis-empowered a week later.

Some of my worst decision-making experiences occurred when the manager had risen from techy ranks. One director of this type usually engineered a solution on the spot, when faced with a serious problem. In the quick moment, no one could argue with him; but in practice his fixes usually failed due to lack of familiarity with relevant detail. The crisis brewed for a few wasted weeks and the troops returned to him with the same problem. One might also say that when the manager is technically adept, the communication barrier gets pushed up one level.