IMO, things were better when we had someone who went to the meetings and got the requirements and handed out assignments and then the rest of the team did the work and returned the assignments.
Now that we have less people we have to go to the meetings AND do the actual work in the same amount of time. The unplanned work is piling up and the deadlines are fast approaching and we're not prepared. Someone on this board mentioned the data center outage in Shoreview a few years back and I think that kind of bad publicity event is right around the corner.