Most managers aren’t really insightful in their leadership. They’re turning a formulaic crank, doing what books tell them to do, and being rewarded by other managers and promoted because managers decide who gets promoted. They form a cargo cult of HBS case study vomit, with no actual management ability. They don’t understand people or how they work, they don’t innovate and figure out how to make effective teams from a collection of individuals. They create policies to form individuals to conform to an idealized worker, write performance plans when they fail to be something they’re not, and wonder why people who are smart enough to go to a top school and graduate with honors and pass the rigorous interview can’t “perform” according to their metrics that are at best proxies for that idealized worker that doesn’t exist. A good manager learns the human dynamics and assembles a team like a puzzle, focusing on the delivery of results over the methods and let the team organize as they organize best, watching for pathological edges and correcting the teams dynamic towards health. They help individuals exaggerate their strengths and find peers to compensate their weaknesses.

The first manager can’t handle remote work because there’s no formula to follow. They’re lost. They’re the boss and don’t like being lost, so they force everyone to conform. It’s all they know how to do, and their cargo cult cheers them.

The second manager is unique but let’s people work the way they work best. In office, at home, hybrid. They figure out ways to smooth the rough edges, and get things to be smooth. People love this manager. They get amazing things done. HBS studies are written about their techniques, and eventually the cargo cult adjusts. But before then the cargo cult of other managers and the management hierarchy absolutely loathes this manager. They don’t speak the cargo cult language. They don’t conform. They seem to be successful, but when they explain their method it doesn’t make sense and doesn’t follow what HBS says. It can’t be right.