I volunteered for a non-profit where we had a model of "accountability" that worked very much this way. Leads weren't told how to do it, they were just given the accountability of making sure it was done and the autonomy to decide how it happened. If a lead quit, that accountability fell to that lead's lead. This led all the way up to the President of the org who would be accountable for everything should everyone quit. It worked fabulously well. We were all volunteers (~250 members). The closest thing I've seen to this in the paid professional world is the holacracy model of business organization. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to convince my current company to grow this way and now we swim through a deep pile of jira tasks, assigning them out to devs one by one with nobody having a clear sense of ownership of anything ever.