Teams need two things to succeed under autonomy: strategic context (vision → strategy → objectives/OKRs, see Mission → Vision → Strategy → Roadmap Hierarchy) and capability (skills, coaching). The "air sandwich" names the failure mode where leadership sets a vision at the top and expects execution at the bottom, but the connective layer between them — the translation from strategy into objectives a team can actually act on — is missing: "in the middle, there might be a big question mark. That's the air." Teams operating inside an air sandwich have direction without an actionable path to it, which starves autonomy of the context condition described in Three Conditions for Empowerment and feeds the Loop of Transformation Failure.
Itamar Christiansen uses a different name for the same gap: "the missing link" — strategy as the missing link between a stated top priority and a large, undifferentiated backlog. Different image, same diagnosis: without it, teams have no line of sight from priorities to the bigger picture, and no way to tell which backlog items actually matter.
Karina Stukan locates one specific instance of the context gap in new-hire roadmaps: when a new PM proposes a "wrong" set of priorities, the reflex is to see it as a thinking or judgment failure. She argues it's almost always a leadership communication failure instead — nobody handed the new hire the "how we'll get there" piece of strategy (situation → destination → path), so they filled the gap with a reasonable-looking but disconnected roadmap. The fix is not more scrutiny of new hires' judgment but closing the same gap this concept already describes.
She also gives a concrete example of the gap closing: after asking a CEO directly where the business's money came from, she learned 90% of revenue traced to one specific customer segment — a fact nobody had proactively shared and that reshaped a prioritization deadlock instantly. See Business Acumen as Curiosity, Not Credentials for the disposition that prompted the question.
Из тем: The Product Operating Model