Yes, but they have permission to use initiative. Scope for initiative is expressly granted by superiors, with explicit bounds. And that freedom is expected to be used. It is part of the development of junior leaders in the military; they are given tests which can only be solved by lateral thinking.
That's not how I've seen "ask forgiveness" used in industry. Usually it's a self-confident maverick who goes off and does something that breaks the rules of organisation or process. I did it once; I thought I was doing the company a favour. Information Security came down on me like a ton of bricks, with good reason, and I nearly lost my job. There was no forgiveness. The Director ensured that it was well publicised and a lot of people learned from my hubris.
The phrase is a crock and should never enter your mind. If you're sure Your Way is best, ask for permission or get consensus. If you get neither, lodge your protest with your superiors and get on with something else. Then in a year's time perhaps people will look back and consider you a visionary, or a hot-headed fool...
Your experience serves as a valuable lesson that everyone should keep in mind. If you aren’t completely aware of the risks you’re taking you should be wary. Information security is something lot of folks are oblivious to in even the basic sense. So I completely understand how your situation happened and why you have an aversion to it. However, I still think there’s value in the phrase but it should be used judiciously. There are plenty of low/non-risk situations where the obstacles are entirely bureaucratic.
That said I think your cautionary tale is really valuable and your uncompromising view toward the phrase actually serves to emphasize how serious everyone should take it. If I were you I wouldn’t change a thing. Actions can have real and sometimes dangerous consequences.
We should always try to understand what we’re putting at risk (as much as we can) so at the very least we can weigh the unknown risks even when asking permission. If you can’t even list the risks off mentally that’s probably a good sign that you should stick to asking permission.
I think this was based on corporate policy and maybe due to the field you're in. It's also symptomatic of a rigid corporate structure that prevents employee initiative without the expressive permission of executives. If you're a large institution, especially a bank, and they have a lot of oversight & compliance concerns, then that explains your hesitation, if you don't have a lot of compliance concerns & regulatory issues, then this was a red-tape situation which was not warranted in your organization and very likely can lead to the end of a large company when flexibility is not possible. Companies like facebook internally with regard to features would not grow as it has, and to some degree even companies like google would not be where they are today either. To my understanding, many organizations grow beyond expectations when they don't have all the red-tape that other companies do. Valve for instance, they have a flat management structure and they're people innovate like crazy, and they hire people who are actively innovative, which often require initiative / independent thinkers.
That's not how I've seen "ask forgiveness" used in industry. Usually it's a self-confident maverick who goes off and does something that breaks the rules of organisation or process. I did it once; I thought I was doing the company a favour. Information Security came down on me like a ton of bricks, with good reason, and I nearly lost my job. There was no forgiveness. The Director ensured that it was well publicised and a lot of people learned from my hubris.
The phrase is a crock and should never enter your mind. If you're sure Your Way is best, ask for permission or get consensus. If you get neither, lodge your protest with your superiors and get on with something else. Then in a year's time perhaps people will look back and consider you a visionary, or a hot-headed fool...