Gee, I'm not sure I think of myself as a packet...

I'm pondering the comment about not being able to manage knowledge workers. There might well be something to that; you can't oversee how they go about their jobs in the same way as you can, say, bank tellers -- the latter jobs are more bound by procedure, and we'd just as soon not get too creative in how you deposit the person's money in his account.

When moving to less clearly defined work, I'm often reminded of an exchange in Saving Private Ryan. Two American officers are talking about the campaign in France. I can't remember the cities, but the gist is: "Gotta take Isigny to get to St-Lo." "Yeah, and gotta take St-Lo to get to Bayeux." "Yep, and gotta take Bayeux to get to Caen."

These guys knew the overall mission. The details about what to do, and how to do it, would depend on at-the-time specifics.