
Management theory is becoming a compendium of dead ideas - fraqed
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21711909-what-martin-luther-did-catholic-church-needs-be-done-business-gurus-management
======
anotherhacker
The problem lies in business schools and degrees like the MBA.

Check out the faculty list at Harvard Business school [link below]. I randomly
looked at profiles of 14 of them and _not a single one had real world business
experience_. If there are any who do have real world experience, it's often
superficial.

To carry on this article's analogy, business schools are the Catholic church
of 1500: incestuous, detached, and self-serving.

Harvard Busisness school faculty:
[http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/browse.aspx](http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/browse.aspx)

~~~
digi_owl
Business shcool, as best i can tell, have elevated the operations of a widget
factory to a religion. And thus MBAs everywhere attempt to turn every
institution they are put to manage, into an assembly line to fit their
religion.

Observe the insanity in health care, where patients are not people but raw
materials to be put through the medical factory and turned into a finished,
aka healed, product at the other end.

~~~
anotherhacker
Yep... and it all started in the 1920s with Taylorism - the idea that
management could be a scientific process.

Taylorism is why, for example, some companies still use lines of code written
as a measure of productivity.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The fact that people do something stupid and attribute it to a scientific
discipline which suggests they shouldn't do it does not discredit that
discipline.

Similarly, the Ariane 5 disaster doesn't mean that the idea of measuring the
physical world with science is wrong.

There's nothing wrong with Taylorism. It works very well in a variety of
fields (e.g. Uber and Amazon use Taylorism very effectively to manage their
line workers). The fields where Taylorism isn't used (e.g. software
development) are far less reliable and effective - Amazon can guarantee that
your package will arrive in 2 days, can you guarantee that your software team
will ship on time?

~~~
teyc
Apparently Taylors report was unscientific at best
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-
mana...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-management-
myth/304883/)

~~~
yummyfajitas
Lots of early physics was also not done very well, lots of fudges, etc. Does
that discredit the idea of applying science to particle movements? Does Freud
discredit the entire idea of psychiatry?

~~~
parenthephobia
Physicists kept doing science, and it got better. Actual proper science has
developed to the point where the computer I'm typing this on has a complex
network of billions of logic gates which operates correctly billions of times
a second. I can reasonably expect the CPU to continue to work for decades.

When managerial "scientists" can achieve anything even remotely comparable to
that level of reliability and reproducibility, it will be time to take it
seriously as a science. Until then, it just isn't one.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Many fields don't give that same level of reliability and reproducability;
climate science, psychology and environmental engineering are all in the same
boat. Guess none of them are sciences.

------
Animats
The dead ideas:

* _Business is more competitive than ever._ But in reality, we have more monopolies and duopolies than ever. Peter Thiel's "Zero to One" is all about how to achieve monopoly. Businesses in the US hate competing on price. Without strong antitrust enforcement, which the US hasn't had in decades, the number of players decreases until there's no price competition. How many Internet providers can you choose from in the US? How many in the UK or Germany?

* _We live in an age of entrepreneurialism._ But the big companies are making all the money. The Economist writes: "A large number of businesspeople who were drawn in by the cult of entrepreneurship encountered only failure and now eke out marginal existences with little provision for their old age." All YC applicants should read that.

* _Business is getting faster._ They compare the fast rise of the automobile. Electricity and aircraft were also deployed faster than the Internet. Progress in the first 50 years of aviation zoomed like the semiconductor industry. Then in the late 1960s, it was all done - the Concorde, the Boeing 747, the SR-71, and the Saturn V had all flown. Everything since then has been a minor improvement.

* _Globalisation is both inevitable and irreversible._ The Economist comments "In 1880-1914 the world was in many ways just as globalised as it is today; it still fell victim to war and autarky." The causes of World War One are worth studying. Nobody really wanted it, and it happened anyway. Before WWI, Germany's biggest trading partner was France.

~~~
sdenton4
Some things are moving fast, though; solar comes to mind as an excellent
example of an area with exponential price drops. At any given time, some
things are improving fast, and most things are improving slowly or not at all.

My feeling is that there are a lot of basic tech improvements just on the
horizon, we start figuring out more ways to bring machine learning into hard
fundamental problems of industrial design, medical diagnosis, and so on.

Which of course leads to inevitable discussions of displaced highly skilled
labor; it's not clear that the areas of fast improvement will lead to a good
distribution of positive outcomes, as we've discussed here so many times
before...

On the whole, though, I agree with the other three points.

~~~
pekk
"Exponential price drops" are less of a miracle when they are produced by
large subsidies as well as dumping from the production side

~~~
sdenton4
Funny how 'subsidies' is a bad word and 'VC funding' isn't.

The idea, in this case, is exactly the same: Invest enough to achieve the
economy of scale, and get the actually-better solution to the point where it's
cheaper than the happens-to-be-currently-dominant solution.

(obvs, subsidies can also be used for other purposes, like protectionism or
ensuring that a vital-for-national-security industry isn't outsourced. But I
believe that for solar it's about investment, more than these other uses.)

~~~
taeric
I like this comparison, actually. But realize that it is expected that most VC
fundings fail. Subsidies is a bad word because it is often an attempt at
rigging the game. With the assumption that we fully know what the answer
should be.

So, if we can move subsidies to be more like experiments where it is expected
that a significant percentage fails, I'm all for it.

------
milesf
I'd say "advanced management theory" may be dying, but I don't even see basic
101 management theory being acknowledged in many organization. Things like
"don't have one person report to two or more people" are violated all the time
and result in predictable chaos and problems.

I'm reminded of the story of garbagemen strike that brought New York City to
their knees, while the Irish Banking Crisis caused only a blip because people
turned to alternative forms of currency. Real managers provide real value
solving real problems, and are well liked by their employees. Unfortunately
most management nowadays is awful, and needs to be pruned.

~~~
wmeredith
Any good sources you would recommend for mgmt 101?

~~~
acidbaseextract
Dead simple practices you can start implementing tomorrow:
[https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Manager-Mark-
Horstman/dp/11...](https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Manager-Mark-
Horstman/dp/1119244609)

Their podcast, Manager Tools, is also excellent.

~~~
mkopinsky
Seconding the Manager Tools Podcast. There's also Manager Tools Basics, which
is a highlight reel of sorts from the main podcast. Their approach can be a
bit simplistic at times, but is immensely valuable.

------
jtcond13
"Business books are basically romance novels for men. Silly fantasies,
terrible writing, large type, cheap paper and one good idea per book" \-
Benedict Evans

[https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/140900879879520256](https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/140900879879520256)

------
calpaterson
These four theories don't seem to be the four most popular in management
theory...in my opinion a rough list of those would be something like: Porter-
style competitive advantage, Toyota-style operations (agile/just-in-time),
everything in modern finance and disruptive vs incremental technology (in the
strict Christensen sense).

The professionalisation of management surely has problems but it's important
to at least characterise the prevailing orthodoxy accurately...and this
article does not.

~~~
spangry
You might be interested to read about William Deming:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming)

He was brought in by MacArthur during the post-WW2 occupation of Japan to help
get their industry running again. You can see some of the seeds of TQM/The
Toyota Production System in his management philosophies.

His management theories are interesting to me because of the emphasis placed
on leadership, and the success and failure of systems of production being
almost entirely their responsibility (he claimed around 85% of production
variance was due to systemic factors i.e. entirely within managerial control).

Some of his 'deadly diseases' seem particularly relevant in this thread. I've
seen many MBA/MPA trained managers makes these errors:

 _The "Seven Deadly Diseases" include:_

\- Lack of constancy of purpose

\- Emphasis on short-term profits

\- Evaluation by performance, merit rating, or annual review of performance

\- Mobility of management

\- Running a company on visible figures alone

\- Excessive medical costs

\- Excessive costs of warranty, fueled by lawyers who work for contingency
fees

 _" A Lesser Category of Obstacles" includes:_

\- Neglecting long-range planning

\- Relying on technology to solve problems

\- Seeking examples to follow rather than developing solutions

\- Excuses, such as "our problems are different"

\- The mistaken belief that management skills can be taught in classes

\- Reliance on quality control departments rather than management,
supervisors, managers of purchasing, and production workers

\- Placing blame on workforces who are only responsible for 15% of mistakes
where the system designed by management is responsible for 85% of the
unintended consequences

\- Relying on quality inspection rather than improving product quality

~~~
calpaterson
A good recommendation as I've read him and like him a lot! It's a bit sad that
most of the people interested in Japanese management ideas aren't interested
in him (though he does have some following).

My recommendation to you (but maybe it's not news to you either): see many of
Deming's ideas applied to modern government in John Seddon:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seddon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Seddon)

~~~
spangry
Oooooh! I haven't heard of this guy, but sounds like something I'd find very
interesting. Thanks for the link!

------
mindcrime
So a select group of industries, including airlines, have seen a lot of
consolidation - you're going to use that as an argument that we aren't in an
era of hypercompetition. Sorry, not buying it.

And that's even more true because the airline example is actually flawed. Not
all consolidation reduces competition. Look at the past few years, where Delta
bought Continental and American and US Airways merged. You'd say that the
number of "major" carriers dropped by two. Fine... now look at the Alaska
Airlines / Virgin America merger... arguably Alaska is now on the cusp of
becoming a "major" carrier, which can compete with the likes of American,
Delta, United and Southwest.

So it was consolidation, but did it make things more or less oligarchical? The
answer isn't as straight-forward as you might think. Likewise, the acquisition
of Airtran by Southwest may actually have created my competition by giving
Southwest more planes, gates, and routes - including their first few
international routes.

None of this is to say that "management theory" is complete, perfect, or even
useful. But this article fails to convince me that it's all just "dead ideas"
either.

------
lkrubner
The conclusion is exactly correct:

"The backlash against globalisation points to a glaring underlying weakness of
management theory: its naivety about politics. Modern management orthodoxies
were forged in the era from 1980 to 2008, when liberalism was in the ascendant
and middle-of-the-road politicians were willing to sign up to global rules.
But today’s world is very different. Productivity growth is dismal in the
West, companies are fusing at a furious rate, entrepreneurialism is
stuttering, populism is on the rise and the old rules of business are being
torn up. "

It is worrisome how much people pay for books that teach things that are
plainly wrong. They mention Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat” but there
are a lot of others they could have listed. For the last 40 years there has
been almost constant rhetoric from business writers about the way that
business was becoming more and more competitive, and yet the numbers show that
exactly the opposite was happening: new business creation has been in decline
since the 1970s, and consolidation means that business has become less and
less competitive for the last 40 years. Monopolies have become more common.
Patent laws and copyrights have been extended to make monopoly easier. It is
true that if you are trying to start a new business, the situation has become
increasingly bleak since the 1970s, so from the point of view of someone just
starting out, things have become harder, and perhaps some people mean that
when they say "things are more competitive". But that isn't the competition of
one business against another, that's the competition of one worker against
another. We should be clear about our terminology.

------
jkraker
The four dead ideas according to the article: 1) Business is more competitive
that ever. 2) We live in an age of entrepreneurialism. 3) Business is getting
faster. 4) Globalization is inevitable and irreversible.

~~~
adekok
Also _Managers know better than you, and are generally better people, and more
capable than you, because of some secret "management" skills._

I've seen engineers promoted to management, who suddenly drink the kool-aid
that they're "better" than the engineers they worked beside a month ago. Now
that they're managers, they _know better_.

The sheer infantilization of the rank and file by managers is appalling, and
wide-spread. Such as hiring an expert in the field, and then ignoring
everything they say.

Good organizations say "Look, I know that's the best way to solve the problem,
but the customer doesn't have time or money for that, so we need something
else".

Bad organizations say "You're just an engineer, and wouldn't understand the
trade-offs inherent in customer interaction".

~~~
monocasa
> I've seen engineers promoted to management, who suddenly drink the kool-aid
> that they're "better" than the engineers they worked beside a month ago. Now
> that they're managers, they know better.

To be fair, while I've absolutely seen what you're talking about, I've also
seen a slightly different phenomenon get blamed for that. Part of a manager's
job IMO is to remove systemic paralysis. Some times that means making a
totally arbitrary decision just so people move forward. Even if it turns out
it was the wrong solution to whatever problem, just making the decision and
allowing people to explore the problem space from different directions can
have some value.

~~~
adekok
I know a number of people in the military, and there's a lot to be said for
_asserting command presence_. Where it doesn't matter what the orders are,
just that someone is there giving clear orders.

I've rarely seen that in managers. The issue I was talking about above was
that managers really can think of themselves as "better" or having "secret
knowledge" that enables them to lord it over the peasant engineers.

I have ethical issues with such an attitude. People are people, no matter how
small.

~~~
cerrelio
My company's style is a culture of consensus. No one really "gives orders,"
because that's too aggressive, and someone might feel hurt. I find it fucking
awful. If there's disagreement about something, usually another person is
brought into the mix for "input," ad infinitum. This happens until the issue
becomes a non-issue or a disagreement over a new issue occurs.

I might disagree with someone if they ordered me to do something I think is
wrong, but I actually admire them for making a decision. There's nothing worse
than making no progress because no one has the balls or authority to say
"there's contention over this issue, but I think X is the best course."

~~~
mirceal
Oh yeah. Ye old "disagree w/ them until they don't care". It's terrible.
Usually the most stubborn peasant will get his way. A toxic culture is
born/consolidated. It drains any excitement that you may have for the job. The
whole process turn into a huge circlej*rl.

------
c3534l
This article is a strawman. These are more characteristic of pop business
books and motivational speakers than it is of anything I've encountered in my
actual business degree. I'm learning about concepts like liquidity versus
profitability and the difference between cellular and functional manufacturing
layouts. This is looking at a couple of popular books on business and claiming
it in some way represents serious business research and education.

------
projectileboy
Business schools (and MBA programs) were an interesting experiment: can you
abstract away the most important parts of a business away from what that
business actually produces? Empirically, the answer appears to be no. It's
understandable that such an experiment would take place. But now that we have
an answer, we should stop pretending that the value produced by business
schools is sufficient to justify their existence.

~~~
tacostakohashi
The existance of serial entrepreneurs suggests that empirically, perhaps the
answer is yes, it just can't be taught in business schools.

~~~
projectileboy
That's a really good point. Would suggest the most important quality for
success is leadership, and that it can't be taught.

~~~
dilemma
It's possible that leadership cannot be taught, but it can be observed and
learnt.

------
sudshekhar
As auganov pointed out, a lot of the BA curriculum is inter-disciplinary and
the content is largely generic (barring specializations such as finance/ops
etc). Nowadays, anybody can access this knowledge for free for little/no cost.
Hence, IMO its not really the content or even the lectures that make MBA
schools sell (something which I think even they admit openly).

Most people go for the 'network' and the validation that the school gives you.
So no matter how outdated their curriculum gets, as long as

a) their current alums promote and guide future ones (shouldn't be any
problem)

b) They are able to continuously source smart people

c) Nobody comes up with a better alternative system to identifying future
leaders

These schools should have no problem.

======

IMO, (a) will never be a problem for these schools. The supply of smart
undergrads/students is also assured given our innate inertia, FOMO and the
perceived lack of growth in non-mba fields as we grow older.

Thus, (c) i.e. somebody coming up with a better metric/validation mechanism to
source top leaders should be the biggest concern for these schools.

The lack of formalism and accountability in the curriculum (specially in the
softer subjects) means that it's unlikely any one finding/study/trend can deal
a major blow to these institutions. For every Enron, they can cite a Jack
Welch.

tl;dr: Slow gradual change/reflection is unlikely to change these schools
much. Disruption is what's needed.

------
throw2016
A CEO is supposed to be a leader, someone who can inspire. What we instead are
management ranks filled with opportunists and short termists who have spend
the last 20 years in management with a single idea - outsourcing.

This is a management class who skate along looking for the next opportunity to
rinse repeat the same playbook. There is no leadership or imagination here.

There is a crisis of leadership, a crisis of accountability, an elitist club
who look out for each other and extreme compensation with parachutes even for
failure.

The whole field of management has not delivered a single good idea, its taken
individuals who go against the wind to show a glimpse of the possibilites
leaving in their wake the tedious industry of management courses and case
studies as magic formulas for success that outside of their original context
have no chance of replication.

------
nunez
I think MBAs are the MCSEs of the business world; you can't get into certain
(high paying) jobs without them despite their value being questionable...

------
daxfohl
So is physics. Perhaps this is already the next middle ages without realizing
it.

------
Balgair
Holy cow! Did anyone else see the comments section on the actual article?
Dumpster Fire is a term that gets banted about a lot, but that part of the
site is surely flaming raw sewage. My god, is that what my uncles see as
'informed' readers? Jesus, the Economist could really use some more heavy
handed mods.

------
vonnik
I wonder why they thought this article was newsworthy. It's news to no one
that most business books are empty of thought. The same goes for many MBA
programs. So yes, we should ignore management theory, but for the reasons
given in this article, we should ignore the Economist.

It's not even clear that the four ideas cited in the magazine are actually
prevalent in management theory. The piece itself did almost nothing to
substantiate that.

One of the best books on management theory is War and Peace. The central idea
in war is simply that good lieutenants are more useful and more rare than the
sycophants and adjutants who circle the chiefs of staff.

One of the second best ideas about management is this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership)

The main job of managers is to make the lives and tasks of competent
individual contributors go more smoothly.

------
jimnotgym
I pose the question as a middle manager who feels those above are doing a
worse job than I could, what would I do to show I am senior management
material. One of those things feels like it should be 'get an MBA'. But as
others have said, maybe this is just _paying the price for entry to the club_.
On the other hand, I see plenty of senior managers who have got their
positions from 1) being in the job below when the senior left or 2) social
connections and have few of the soft skills or technical skills that would
make them a decent manager. At least MBA's give the appearance of a
meritocracy!

------
jaypaulynice
I think business school is already disrupted with startup accelerators like
YC. It's a matter of time before they realize it. Some accelerator programs
even want a tuition. I've pondered this a lot thinking what I would learn to
go to business school, but problem is that you can't get funding to start a
company, but you can get funding to attend business school. Hence why business
schools exist now. But 10-15 years from now this will change.

------
cjf4
>Management theories are organised around four basic ideas, repeated ad
nauseam in every business book you read or business conference you attend,
that bear almost no relation to reality.

This a weak premise whose scant evidence is primarily composed of pop business
airport books. And the idea that the vast, diverse, and nebulous world of
management can be distilled to four ideas is a joke.

~~~
moxious
I thought it was a fair distillation. Any distillation of a field is bound to
be incomplete, but what do you think it was missing?

------
andyidsinga
this:

"The theorists’ third ruling idea is that business is getting faster. There is
some truth in this. Internet firms can acquire hundreds of millions of
customers in a few years. But in some ways this is less impressive than
earlier roll-outs: well over half of American households had motor cars just
two decades after Henry Ford introduced the first moving assembly line in
1913. And in many respects business is slowing down. Firms often waste months
or years checking decisions with various departments (audit, legal,
compliance, privacy and so on) or dealing with governments’ ever-expanding
bureaucracies. The internet takes away with one hand what it gives with the
other. Now that it is so easy to acquire information and consult with
everybody (including suppliers and customers), organisations frequently dither
endlessly."

------
no_wizard
As someone who is a respected manager, according to anonymous surveys my
managed peers take every year (and they are truly anonymous) as well as what I
learned from the manager I came to most respect in my life and still go to to
this day even though he isn't any more, I think what makes good management
particularly effective is a few things. Before I list them out and explain
though, I just want to add one caveat: This isn't applicable for everyone, and
certainly not every industry, and everyone's situation is different and it can
be hard to relay some idea's perfectly in text so I'm going to do my best.

With all that said, here's a little background as well. I manage a team of
folks who are in charge of IT infrastructure and deployment. Mobile devices,
servers, VPNs, virtualization setups, as well as database administration and
some non-customer facing coding to keep everything going, all the way down to
the desktop setups for employees. I work with maybe 30 people underneath me
and there can't be more than 100 of us all together. Each of my 30 team
members are tasked with different tings in accordance to the rough outline i
speak to above.

Now, to the good bits

1) If i learned anything, from being the manager to before that, its a really
really simple thing. Don't ever forget where you came from. Ever. I often will
think about making a decision - some big, some small - and I remind myself
'What would my reaction be if i wasn't a manager, but underneath me? How would
I react to this? Positive? Negative? Why?' I find that my best manager did
this all the time, and it really showed because he was one of us before he was
a manager (for my company this is typical, we don't get a lot of outside
management for our group that hasn't at least had some experience on the
basics of what we do). The reason for this is to me obvious, in that you will
better understand the actual core of your decisions affects this way. Its easy
to forget all this in the day to day, but its a huge one.

Specifically, it has benefited in that some changes that came down from those
who manage me, were immediately rejected because I was able to articulate, in
a way they could understand, why the new change would be bad. For instance,
they wanted to take away our hands-on Lab for testing new technologies (this
is a good part of what we do, to keep up on things) and go to a more virtual
one. In theory this seems okay, there's a lot of companies that do this
(Cisco, itpro.tv, VMware, all have these kinda things) but I made the case
that no, have it hands on, with good training attached to the hands on labs,
was a more effective on the whole, and it cost less, because we could dedicate
a rotation of people to learn something, teach it to the team, and then the
team gets to test it, and they rotate into to teaching back, until we feel the
technology is well covered to at least a 'intermediate' level for all members
on our team. With the virtualization, this was lost, and they had to pay more
for the licenses. It ended up being better for us because we could just get
labs setup, get documentation/official manuals/training material, learn it,
and teach it over the course of x weeks to everyone else, and they could then
come in to the lab when there was allotted time, break stuff, fix stuff etc.
and round it went.

2) One of the best things I ever learned as well, is that if someone or
someone's is designated as a point of contact, they should be treated as such
for a project. For instance, if I designated Steve the networking guy as my
point of contact for network related projects that I need someone to oversee,
I essentially report to him, with some exceptions, instead of him reporting to
me about the project. This gives them freedom, and gets them into a position
where they can also learn good managing skills or at least, focus on big
picture things for awhile. I don't micro manage, I philosophically meet my
team half way. If things that we have as objectives are being met, and are
exceeding expectations, then i give more leeway. I will always stick up for
them if they in turn do good work, and the more good work that is produced,
the more freedom I'm willing to allow. This has created a huge win for the
company as well, as our team is small, but incredibly productive.

3) Don't try to sanitize feedback. This isn't a 'be a jerk' card, but team
members who want to improve honestly like feedback, and give it to them
honestly. Good and bad. One thing old managers i know used to do is never talk
about the things I did well - to reinforce those things, is the purpose - but
only talk about how we could improve. My best manager, and a skill i keep as
well, is whenever I do check in with my team in a 1 on 1 way, we talk about
what they're doing that is amazing and great, and then we talk about area's of
imrovement, and relate it back to 'so these are your core strengths, how can
you apply what makes these your core strengths to these problems?" that really
gives people a lot of motivation in my experience

4) If you make a commitment to someone, meet it, obviously huge unexpected
things aside that you can't plan for, this generally is huge. Not forgetting
say, asking upper management for x thing on their behalf (our company works
this way a lot, though we're trying to change that). or even just follow up
when you say you will. If you do miss it, explain why, honestly, and then go
from there

5) Training is important. invest in your team, your team invests in you, and
that makes for a great company to work for, have as a client, and essentially
helps you grow. It took our company some time to realize this, but now they're
full on.

6) Rotate their roles, but don't push overly hard for people to do what they
don't like unless there really is a specific reason. and I'm not talking about
' I don't like putting notes together detailing these implementations'. There
are musts in every job, and enforce those across the board. I'm talking more
'okay, so, you been doing the networking for like a year, year and half, are
you okay, burned out, want to try something new?' this lets people pick up new
skills, maintain those skills, and apply their previous work experience on
your team in different ways. We're team 'swiss army' internally for this
reason :) and my headcount is smaller than the next guys, but we're always
rated one of the top teams. I think this has a lot to do with it. (out of 4
teams, granted)

7) you can be of great value as a manager if you learn to filter what is
actually nessacary and what isn't from upper management before talking to your
team about their goals/expectations. See my example on the virtual labs. My
team didn't know that was even a consideration until another manager in the
same meeting mentioned it to their team. by that time, it was dead, and my
team was grateful they didn't have to waste time thinking about it.

8) If someone is bad hire, and your team isn't working because of this, don't
be afraid to do something about it. you're a manager, sometimes doing hard
things like firing someone or moving them into a different position they're
more skilled for is something you need to recongize early. this goes along
with my next point....

9) if your team members come to you saying somehting about how they are being
treated by others, take it at face value, look into it, and have their back.
Always. Always. Always. Never dismiss this. I had an incident where someone
was being discriminated against based on their sex by an older team mate who i
think just had it in their head from a different time what the role of that
person was and wasn't, and I had recently assigned them as a project lead. I
didn't tell them to deal with it, I looked into it, asked a trusted colleague
to talk to some folks about it (not revealing the nature, just said 'Hey man,
could you do me a favor? coud you ask around and get a feel for what people
are getting a vibe about person x? I want some imparitialness to this' Idk if
that violates policy in HR or not, but for me it worked well, i squashed it
quickly and made it VERY clear what isn't tolerated on my team in a short
amount of time, but it also came down to the person who was saying things that
were considred sexist didn't realize what they had going on was just a
reflection of insecurities. Sometimes you're being the psychologist therapist
and working them through those feelings so they can understand what happened.
I didn't end up having to separate them or fire anyone in this case, because
that person came to an understanding and the person in charge separately was
okay working from a clean slate as long as it didn't continue, once they
understand what triggered what. Now they both work together extremely well and
are both happy.

Anyways, that's my experience. I'm no lawyer, no MBA, and your mileage may
vary, esp. on that last bit, but these are some representations and guidelines
i follow often.

------
maverick_iceman
If management theory have no value then why MBA grads from top schools are so
high in demand? This is not a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely curious as
I've wondered about this for a long time.

~~~
chadcmulligan
I've always thought there are two sorts of management - keep things going
style and make new stuff mode. MBA's are directed at keeping things going -
fitting into middle management, warring with other MBA factions, fighting over
internal politics etc. You need an MBA for this because you know the language,
it's a very unique language and to get respect from the current incumbents you
need to know the language. It has nothing to do with making new things (in
general), these are stories they like to tell themselves, but I think in
general it's not correct.

The other sort of business is making new things, here business school
knowledge comes in handy but it's not a big part of the answer - you can learn
this stuff on the fly. More so I think knowing too much MBA stuff can be
detrimental cause it interferes with your gut feelings. If having an MBA was
useful then every startup would have an MBA, like every middle manager has an
MBA, qed.

So MBA's in short MBA's are in high demand because they teach you the rules of
the game that all the other MBA's know. Does it have much to do with business
itself? Well some of it imho

edit: you could say an MBA contains the rules of engagement. but having an MBA
doesn't make you a great general, and street fighters never bother to learn
the rules.

------
known
TOP-DOWN:

Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), Narcissism
(egotism and self-obsession), Psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy),
Sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others);

------
CapitalistCartr
The best business advice I've ever read was put out by the Scientologists. Not
that they do a good job of following their own advice; but its good. They know
how to be effective.

~~~
iamdave
Such as....??

~~~
mirekrusin
it's full of bullshit and they did some bad things but there are some good
points:

\- generally high moral standard and ethics are valued a lot - it pays back
long term in business

\- focus on drug detox, exercise, being fit in general - you can argue it's
not business advice but on the other hand it's very practical if you think
about it

\- focus on understanding things, misinformation is very bad thing (like a
sin)

\- state of flow - this is quite interesting in context of programmers - we
all know it's there and it would be nice to be able to train yourself to go
into this state when you want.

IMHO you can't say it's good or bad, it feels more like opinionated, almost
randomly, cherry picked things from religions, psychology etc. glued together
with a book by sci-fi writer - some things will be correct, most not.

------
maverick_iceman
[http://abstrusegoose.com/380](http://abstrusegoose.com/380)

------
swimorsinka
I would have liked to see a discussion of "maximizing shareholder value".

------
blueprint
All ideas are dead. Only true facts are alive.

~~~
bardworx
Are you being sarcastic or silly?

Seems troll-ish to me...

~~~
blueprint
People hear what they want to hear.

------
KirinDave
The irony of this article in claiming that management theory is outdated is
that it selects ideas that were ascendent 10 years ago pre-financial crash.

The author should consider reading a book published after 2005.

Not that I'm a huge fan of the genre, to be honest. Way too often I basically
see management books arguing that domain skill in the subject managed is
immaterial and I could not disagree more with that.

Also, I'm curious what metrics he's assessing for "productivity growth is
dismal in the west." It's precisely because of productivity growth that we can
envision an economy where centralization and globalization are not inevitable
forces.

