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Management in business and government is a complete mess. Companies are simply dictatorships with clueless people up top. How could we do better?
How does business work? How does government work? How do things get done?
Well, management issues orders and workers carry them out. Management is supposed to be capable of directing things and workers are supposed to be able to follow that direction. And together, this is what produces food, and services, and public projects, and business empires.
Supposedly.
If you’ve been in the workforce for awhile, you know from direct experience that this isn’t quite reality. Managers are largely clueless, and the higher up they are in the organization, the more clueless they are. This is structural. It’s largely independent of the intelligence of the people holding those positions.
Management doesn’t know what’s going on with the actual work because they don’t do any of it. They are in no position to know much of anything. They can ask employees for information, but employees quickly learn that telling the truth to the boss is either a waste of time, or creates problems for employees. Advice is either ignored, or the employee is told to fix the problems without being given the tools or authority to do so.
