First, to appreciate Red Alert behaviours and decision-making processes, one must understand and appreciate what is the Ready Room, and the Observation Lounge, aka Conference Room.
Ready Room: A place the Captain does his work, and has private meetings. Longer description below.
Observation Lounge: A place the senior staff meet to discuss important business, and make decisions. Longer description below
Captain hears you out
In business, and on a Federation starship, when important decisions need to be made, the Captain asks the senior staff to meet in the Observation Lounge. If the captain requires specific and narrowly defined expertise, he’ll meet one or two team members in his Ready Room. The Captain, like a good CEO will consider the recommendations of his team members, especially his senior staff. Echoed from the book Prinicples (Ray Dalio), it is wise to highly consider the recommendations of those that possess believability. Sometimes, you may want to hear out everyone in your senior team; even take a vote. Patrick Lencioni in many of his leadership and management books talks about this. The leader needs to hear out his team, then make a final call. If there’s a tie when voting, the leader’s responsibility is to break that tie. Rarely does a great leader veto his senior team member’s recommendation. For obvious reasons, those members are in their roles and positions because they bring expertise and believability.
Rules change in Red Alert
Wwhen shit hits the fan, and an emergency is at hand, there’s no time to meet with your team. Imagine a Romulan Warbird de-cloaking on your port side, with phasers charged and torpedos locked. The captain must take full command. To attempt to argue endlessly with your captain about strategies and tactics during a Red Alert situation only puts the safety of the crew and ship in danger. It is in Red Alert situations that the team must now fully trust in the wisdom of their captain. Anything less is mutiny.
References
Here, the captain could engage in administrative work with all relevant office equipment at hand without interfering with bridge operations while having instant access to the bridge in the event of a crisis. In addition, this room was usually the preferred place where the captain could hold private discussions and/or receive classified communications.
In the absence of the ship’s commanding officer, the use of the ready room accordingly fell to whichever officer was in command of the vessel at the time. The captain’s ready room was a personal office reserved for the commanding officer of a starship and was typically accessed from the bridge.
Here, the captain could engage in administrative work with all relevant office equipment at hand without interfering with bridge operations while having instant access to the bridge in the event of a crisis. In addition, this room was usually the preferred place where the captain could hold private discussions and/or receive classified communications.
In the absence of the ship’s commanding officer, the use of the ready room accordingly fell to whichever officer was in command of the vessel at the time. Memory Alpha
On both the Galaxy- and Sovereign-classes, the room was elongated, spanned the entire area aft of the bridge on Deck 1 and featured a large conference table. Memory Alpha
