> if the sender has enough decision power to move forward with a default action without confirmation, then the email is simply a polite notice to someone above in the command chain, isn’t it?

In one team I did this all the time even though I didn't have the decision power. I did it to force people to respond.

Prior to my adopting this strategy, I'd send an email saying "We need a decision about this by X", and the most common response was ... sorry, there wasn't any! The majority of times people didn't respond, and I was stuck.

So I had to switch to "This is needed by X. I'm going to go ahead with Y, but let me know if you have other ideas."

And I would ensure that Y was a poor solution. I would get really rapid responses saying "Don't do Y! Do Z!"

Even though I've moved to other teams, I often use this technique (except if the team acts in good faith, my solution Y is actually my best attempt at solving it).

You've probably got a certain level of trust or delegated authority, but you want input and you're giving your leadership the opportunity to steer the decision if they feel they need to, and you're balancing that against the urgency of action.

By very direct analogy, I think there's a dictum in the US military to the effect that a bad plan executed quickly can be better than a perfect plan that's executed too late.

ETA: ... and you're potentially speeding the decision/action by giving leadership the opportunity to confirm/redirect on receipt of the email.

Heres an somewhat contrived example scenario.

I’m going to McDonalds what do you want— a big mac meal sure no problem.

Get there. Oh wait what did he want for a drink? Coke? Coffee? Water?

Send a text what you want to drink?

No answer — what do you do?

Instead text should be saying ‘getting u a coke unless you let me know’

No answer in time, so you just get a coke for your friend and if he doesn’t like it tough.

So in that sense i guess yes its a polite notice. But it points to failures in the process .

You should have known what he wanted to drink before going.

You have or now create a policy that states in cases of unknown drink or default is coke.

If your guys ‘don’t’ know whether they can drop feature X or ship late they have been failed by the level above that should state shipping is priority. Therefore dropping a feature is the only action that they can take.

But in take the other point that you do need some authority . Without it progress will stall, and this becomes management issue again. They didn’t ensure you had the info or resource to do the thing.

Edit to add after thinking about it a bit more, that when dealing with customers a slow customer can stall your whole op if you make waiting on a decision from them. Just tell then what you are doing and it lets you proceed. If they come back later with opposite decision then you just do that as well,typically.

Outputting files to a customer :

Do you want them named like this or like that?

No— tell them how you are naming them and if they dont like it theybwil let you know.

Its about removing decisions from customer as most of the time they dont even know what they want