I've really found this to be true; I've had just a small handful of great managers and most of them worked more like "team secretaries", with just two who would also deploy political capital in an expert way to keep things running well. Those were the best. Most of the good managers topped out at acting as personal assistants to the team, helping (not dictating) to keep things organized.
The just ok managers barely did anything, which was still not bad. They didn't make things worse but didn't make them much better either.
The worst would dictate, randomize and foist cleanup of their own making onto you. Those folks I often wished would just stop showing up to work even if they kept collecting a paycheck; things would have run smoother if they did.
> I've had just a small handful of great managers and most of them worked more like "team secretaries"
What if you have really passive team members? So somebody need to digest the big project into smaller pieces and assign people to them, you can't just throw the project and expect it to go smoothly. If you don't it will take extra 2-3 months to start things up. I suspect in your case the team is motivated and experienced and/or there are some engineering leads in the team who can do that instead.
The just ok managers barely did anything, which was still not bad. They didn't make things worse but didn't make them much better either.
The worst would dictate, randomize and foist cleanup of their own making onto you. Those folks I often wished would just stop showing up to work even if they kept collecting a paycheck; things would have run smoother if they did.