The management myth
by Stewart, Matthew · first published 2009
14mentions
9recommended by
14HN commenters
2009–2026first – last mentioned
64% recommend29% neutral7% critical
Why HN recommends it
Sharp, entertaining critique of management theory and consulting. It debunks fads and examines the weak evidence behind figures like Taylor and Porter. Suited to readers skeptical of business advice.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Matthew Stewart's "the management myth" runs with this thesis. Google it - the Atlantic article is a great read. He explicitly links the Tom Peters types with televangelists and self help infomercial pitchmen.
on “Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead” ↗…it you talk and read about doing it. It's just like learning Org-mode (no offense) to be better organized instead of, you know, organizing. My waking call was, ironically, another management book "The Management Myth" by Matthew Steward (I think), which just showed me the ridiculousness of it all.
on “The Self-Help Trap: What 20 Years of "Optimizing" Has Taught Me” ↗Matthew Stewart's The Management Myth[1] is a pretty brutal autobiography of "strategy consulting". A key insight is the role of business school theorists, particularly Michael Porter. Porter essentially looked over the fence at economics,…
on “Good Consultants vs. Bad Consultants” ↗I recomment reading "The Management Myth" by Matthew Stewart, on this topic
on “The Rise of the Bullshittery” ↗…- the young Bob and Bob McKinseys. So much money, so little results. Which prompts me to recommend my favorite book on management consulting, the life, the legends, the myths: http://www.amazon.com/Management-Myth-Debunking-Business-Phi...
on “Tech Prep by Facebook” ↗…Dr. Richard Nisbett calls the Hawthorne effect ''a glorified anecdote.'' (https://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/06/weekinreview/scientific-m...) I learned both these facts from the highly entertaining "The Management Myth": https://mwstewart.com/books/the-management-myth/
on “Frederick W. Taylor offers some productivity hacks (1911)” ↗…in part about the dark side of Lean and its impact on workers. Or just read an interview with the author: http://www.gembapantarei.com/2006/05/interview_with_darius_m... I also recommend reading The Management Myth which is about management theory in general: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-mana... The wikipedia page on participatory design gives a nice overview: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_design…
on “The Agile Labour Union” ↗…hiring people who have no skills, aren't given the time to really learn skills to sufficient depth, and then they are passed onto clients to do alleged value-added work. Stories like Monkey Business or The Management Myth make this case better than I can in an HN comment. I highly suggest both books.
on “How Wall Street recruits so many Ivy League grads” ↗Anybody who found this interesting will like 'The Management Myth': > The thing that makes modern management theory so painful to read isn’t usually the dearth of reliable empirical data. It’s that maddening papal infallibility. Oh sure, there are a few pearls of insight,…
on “Bulldoze the business school” ↗For a contrary opinion, try Matthew Stewart. His book, "The Management Myth," was nicely excerpted in the Atlantic [1]. He's particularly harsh on Taylor's early experiments, which claimed to be scientific but were anything but. [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-mana...
on “Inside McKinsey” ↗It's interesting to note that the author plans to release a book regarding the same subject later in the year: http://www.amazon.com/Management-Myth-Consulting-Present-Lar.... While it should be a good read, it's bit too opportunistic IMO, given the current economic climate. Heads will roll, and MBA's are a juicy scapegoat (nonetheless, deservingly…
on “The Management Myth (2006)” ↗I forget his name at the moment, but the author of "The Management Myth" retired early from management consulting to write a book on philosophy.
on “The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell” ↗The author of the article you provided calls "The Management Myth": "the article is disjointed, dull, obvious, smug, poorly written, and full of falsely-elevated faux philosophy chatter" plethora adjectives, but fails to bring any argument.
on “The Management Myth (2006)” ↗…don't know how fair the criticisms were. Still, it was a really interesting window into an area that overlaps quite a bit with the tech industry. Anyhoo, the book that emerged from this article is "The Management Myth: Debunking Modern Business Philosophy": https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002PQ7B72/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
on “The management myth (2006)” ↗