Yeah I like to call these types of management "smile f**ers".
My last org was like this. All smiles, everything great, everyones doing a great job.
Except that behind the scenes senior management was very unhappy about certain things, and our entire org got its clock cleaned over the following 18 months. Senior managers moved aside, others downgraded to IC roles, pushed a few people out, new leads hired from outside, etc etc.
In some worlds there are experienced managers that know processes and systems inside and out. they clearly stand out as leaders. But in areas where there is a lot of ambiguity, change and innovation, sometimes NOBODY knows whether something is a good idea or not. What else are you supposed to do other than say "it's sounds reasonable let's go for it". Only later to get the results back and find out it was a flop. Now changes have to be made to make it look like effort is being made to reduce flops. Could it also be something like that?
Except that behind the scenes senior management was very unhappy about certain things, and our entire org got its clock cleaned over the following 18 months. Senior managers moved aside, others downgraded to IC roles, pushed a few people out, new leads hired from outside, etc etc.