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by blowski 1804 days ago
Absolutely, bad managers can still be bad managers, even with a framework like this.

But it can help big companies in two ways:

1. You can assess bad managers against the framework, show how they are not delivering it, and remove an excuse that they “didn’t realise”.

2. Help good managers see what’s required in common situations.

For what it’s worth, I agree with you that this is often corporate malarkey. Typically, the company doesn’t live up to the framework - it’s merely wallpapering for their own biases, which still come through anyway. But I understand why they try, and it sometimes works better than others. Not doing anything would probably be even worse. And all other solutions have their own problems. At enterprise level, there is no universal solution.

1 comments

> For what it’s worth, I agree with you that this is often corporate malarkey. Typically, the company doesn’t live up to the framework - it’s merely wallpapering for their own biases, which still come through anyway. But I understand why they try, and it sometimes works better than others. Not doing anything would probably be even worse. And all other solutions have their own problems. At enterprise level, there is no universal solution.

I laughed out loud, just like real life Dilbert. I can imagine how these meetings would go. I think we gotta take this bullshit lightly and not get too caught up in its utility (there is none, even though you’re trying and I can empathize). Just act like it’s all great, do work, go home. I presume most people know it’s bullshit but still roll with it. I pity those who don’t. Gotta love enterprise life and it’s depressing if we don’t take it lightly. Office Space reminded us in a hysterical way.

Even your most successful solutions will be inspiration for somebody else's "enterprises are screwed up" cartoons. Enterprises are just too complex, so that good solutions appear stupid to most people since they don't have all the information necessary to understand why that decision was made. But, of course, there are also a lot of stupid solutions because of bad reasons.