[wjnc]

'But': I've not once met a manager that was thinking about his budget first and foremost. Budget thinking is always implicit and couched in other objectives of a firm. So there must be some mechanism that fails holding said manager accountable for attaining the business goals he gets his budget for. So should I then look at the controllers for failing to control? I'm really at a loss (professionally) why some managers get away with no results and growing budgets and project portfolios, even within a culture that values delivery.

[badpun]

Such incompetent manager (let's call him manager A) is in turn a part of his manager (one level above, let's call him B) "empire". B admitting that A's department is incompetent and is actually not doing much, and thus could really be disbanded, is not in B's interest, as it would shrink the size of his empire.