Obviously if you're doing something with compliance/legality/security implications it's worth asking permission. And obviously, you should build processes around those areas in your company. But healthy companies also heavily encourage individual initiative to achieve results rather than relying on top-down command-and-control. If you're a startup, it's doubly important because you just don't have enough people to set up a bureaucracy of permission-givers.
If your employees don't have the judgment to know when to ask for forgiveness rather than permission, fire them and hire people who do have good judgment. Don't use process to protect yourself from hiring bozos. Just don't hire bozos.
Much of the time you should ask forgiveness rather than permission, you're not really required to ask permission in the first place and you just end up creating useless bikeshedding discussions. If there's a process that requires you to ask permission, and the process is genuinely important, it's a different matter.
It's worth noting that the first person to say "it's easier to ask forgiveness than to get permission" was Grace Hopper, who not only wrote the first compiler, but served for four decades in the Navy. So you can accomplish a lot of things and still somehow not get fired from even stodgy bureaucratic institutions with this mentality.
I'm sorry you've had to work with a lot of dicks and bozos. I had a coworker like that once too. Had. I've used, and seen used, "forgiveness before permission" many times in my career and aside from that guy it always worked out.
If your employees don't have the judgment to know when to ask for forgiveness rather than permission, fire them and hire people who do have good judgment. Don't use process to protect yourself from hiring bozos. Just don't hire bozos.
Much of the time you should ask forgiveness rather than permission, you're not really required to ask permission in the first place and you just end up creating useless bikeshedding discussions. If there's a process that requires you to ask permission, and the process is genuinely important, it's a different matter.
It's worth noting that the first person to say "it's easier to ask forgiveness than to get permission" was Grace Hopper, who not only wrote the first compiler, but served for four decades in the Navy. So you can accomplish a lot of things and still somehow not get fired from even stodgy bureaucratic institutions with this mentality.
I'm sorry you've had to work with a lot of dicks and bozos. I had a coworker like that once too. Had. I've used, and seen used, "forgiveness before permission" many times in my career and aside from that guy it always worked out.