Interesting chapter in the book I'm currently reading (By the way, great book - 1st Break all the rules). You should avoid saying the lines "I think this is a crazy idea, but the corporate insists". What you've just done there is demotivate everyone around you. I've done this plenty of times on my current project. I hear and see something reasonably mad and I report it back to the team and after a while you end up doing two things. One you foster a "Us vs Them" attitude which is never healthy. Secondly you give people excuses to be less than the best they can be and reduces the overall effectiveness of the organization.
So I'm thinking of doing the following:
1. If someone is doing something stupid that doesn't affect my team, just don't report it unless someone asks.
2. If someone asks something stupid of your team, make sure you have all the information and go to the team with it. If the team thinks its stupid, don't make promises of trying to change it.
3. If they insist on it, get the reasoning. It's very rare the reasoning is just plain mad, it is usually a compromise. Find a middle ground and justify the decision to your team as to why you accepted, rather than you didn't have a choice. People are generally mature enough to handle this. By passing the buck, you reduce the trust in the upper organization and you reduce the team's trust in you as a manager.
(This isn't the most well thought out blog post, but I've had a number of people complain I haven't updated in a while, so I figured why not ease myself back into it.)
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