Isn't this just plain cargo cult management? They read someone claiming some process is the best, proceed to monkey the process and then get surprised when the imagined results don't materialize.
This sentence also describes the vast majority of startups - "It’s when we imitate behaviors without understanding how they work in the hope of achieving the same results. Naturally enough, it’s not something that works."
I remember when that goddamn Steve Jobs book came out. For a good while every founder and CEO suddenly thought they were some kind of product wizard and started trying to imitate Jobs’s hands-on micro-detailed product design meddling.
I'm starting to wonder whether you could reliably predict management behavior at large corporations by tracking the bestseller biographies that came out. Or being current with HBR.
This is a very interesting idea. Now I'm getting curious to see how this could be put into action.
Whilst probably not as beneficial as predicting behaviour, there could be a startup version to find the origins of buzzwords. Then try to predict how management will potentially push that company forward using these buzzwords or references to external sources.
