[mathattack]

Yes. Many management books and theories confuse correlation with causality.

Another common example, "Companies with happier employees are more successful." But perhaps causality is the other way, "Employees become happy when their companies succeed."

[jamez1]

Or perhaps there isn't causality either way. For example, perhaps good management tends to produce both happy employees and successful companies.

[mathattack]

Yes - very much so. This happens a lot. Frequently when you optimize on a metric, the correlations go away.

[usrusr]

Enter the stock market and suddenly the cargo culting that results from causality mixups can successfully increase market capitalization for a while as long as enough people literally buy into the shared misconception.

It must be hard to think straight in a domain where one of the most visible success metrics can be so misleading.

[fullshark]

I wish more companies made that mistake