This may not be true. Let's take the case of Stephen Smale. An incredibly smart man who would go on to win a Fields Medal. And yet, without someone providing the structure within which to work and without an external motivation, a mildly mediocre graduate student.

All the credit for his work goes to him, of course. But one can easily imagine him completely flaming out with a different department head and advisor.

It is precisely because people are not cogs that managers can either be a force multiplier or an unmitigated disaster.

EDIT: on rereading, that guy isn't saying all management is like this but that his hypothesis explains certain managers. All right. That makes my comment a non-sequitur.