I can buy the part about putting up fences between business people at the tech team. Been there, done that, modernized project management. But the "thank you"s, bonuses and all that? Complete fantasy. :)
When I first encountered the Phoenix Project, I was expecting it to be some kind of satire. It wasn't, it was played straight all the way through and ends with "a win".
It blows my mind that someone could write a novel about work and NOT have it be a satire or dark comedy. This book is used in project management courses, by the way.
While I have no evidence in this particular case, if I wanted to promote a book, I could imagine making up a related, positive story, which just happens to mention the book positively, and posting it on a popular social media site (I put the book in my cart). Then one could follow up with a softball opposing story on another site to get some controversy and thus visibility.
Probably someone will cross link for you (I thought about doing that when I saw the headline). If not, a sock puppet can point out the link, and the book, again.
TBH these two stories have the exaggerated perfection that characterizes fake stories. And the fact that they arrived so close together makes me very suspicious.
The manager maybe, but you don't change the culture of the company like that. A low level manager has very little influence on that, they'd be replaced the moment other VPs started complaining.
Depends on the on the exact political arrangements. I’ve seen a “low” level manager get the ear of a senior leader and get protection/empowerment that ended them to do something on par with this. It sounds like the author got the appropriate buy in, and I suspect that not all ad hoc work got prioritized in a FILO manner.
It sounded implausible to me. Admittedly I don’t work for a large corporation but this sounded like a socially challenged persons dream of how they’d convince large groups of opposing people to their side. Hostile interactions with shelter from an all powerful HR and the vague threat of a lawsuit.
I've explicitly asked for strong barriers from external leads and developers from my manager before and gotten them. My current boss aggressively puts barriers in place to keep us from being bothered or distracted.
Why? I do this stuff all the time as a manager. It really goes exactly that way. Notice that the reddit commenter started with getting buy-in from the higher-up in their org. He didn't unilaterally start changing process.
This is honestly basic management technique. It is called the "Auntie/Uncle" problem.
I’m having a bit of trouble what “Auntie/Uncle problem” is in reference to. My Google search are just a bit too generic to narrow in. Any chance you know of an article on the subject I can read through?