Photo by Bornil Amin on Unsplash

Both generally have abysmal management, but on balance government has a better chance of competent management — albeit NOT under the current administration.

So much absolute bullshit has become “conventional wisdom” that it’s refreshing — and a bit disorienting — as these false assumptions are finally becoming exposed and discredited.

We don’t have representative government. Our inalienable rights are not being protected here any more than in, say, China. Trickle down never trickles down. The wealthy and their corporations are not job creators. Free enterprise has nothing to do with personal freedom.

Maybe the most absurd and loathsome lie is the lie of meritocracy. Nearly all management under every system is, essentially, a demeritocracy. Our labor is controlled by the least competent and most clueless among us.

Some examples:

The Falcon series of rockets are a resounding success. Why? Because SpaceX hired capable engineers, provided the needed funding, and let them do their work.

The Starship is a complete disaster. After 9 test flights, it’s still not nearly capable of taking a payload into orbit — much less carrying a human crew. Why? Because the competent engineers were overruled by an incompetent boss. Now, it may look like I’m picking on Elon Musk — and I am — but this is actually a single example of a gigantic widespread problem.

Nearly everything created or accomplished in business and industry and government is the work of competent front-line hands on workers — who successfully evaded management to carry out their work.

Why do I say this? It’s not about good or evil — although it’s true that morally challenged people seem to occupy most of the decision-making positions. It’s about knowledge and ego.

People who do the work — like, say, rocket scientists — are usually interested in the work and the task. And even if they are not, they know they will be held accountable so they to pay attention and think, and do what needs to be done.

Of course, the people who are interested in getting rich, and not in the actual tasks or objectives, tend to go into finance with business degrees and such. They want to be hedge fund managers or CEOs, not climate scientists or librarians.

Hedge fund managers have a skill: swindling. But the front line workers are actually capable of creating things.

Anyhow, both managers and especially executives at big corporations — the decision-makers — don’t have the skills to create things, nor do they have the interest. They don’t know how the project actually works. They set the rules — rules based on the clueless guesses of people who are not hands-on — and, as needed, the employees secretly disobey those rules to get the job done.

Don’t believe me? Well, if you are in upper management, you simply will never know.

Nobody will tell you because they know that messengers tend to get shot. But those of us who have worked, actually WORKED and not simply issued clueless orders based on untethered “analysis,” are familiar with this.

Workers do whatever must be done. We buy the tool needed to do the job — the one the boss nixed. Or we go around the official organizational chart and talk directly to the people in the other department who is involved in the project. We have our ways.

And we know what always happens. If the project doesn’t succeed, WE are blamed. And if it does succeed, our bosses take the credit. Middle management? They are also considered dispensable and useful scapegoats.

Another excellent example? Boeing. This was an impressive company, and an unusually competent one. That’s because it was an engineering company RUN BY ENGINEERS. This company built outstanding aircraft and spacecraft for decades. The people up top must have trusted their engineers. Because they let them do their best work.

That all ended with the “acquisition” of McDonnell Douglas. The acquired company was not run by engineers. The finance people were in charge. And, after the so-called merger, the parasite swallowed the host, whole.

The “new” Boeing is run by the bean counters of the former McDonnell Douglas. Their flagship product is the 737MAX — a badly conceived airplane who’s sole merit was its projected ability to generate profits. The engineers hated it. They objected, put up a fuss.

Some quit. Some were fired. The 737MAX was built and sold. And it was and is a death machine. Passengers were killed, hundreds, in multiple airline crashes of the 737MAX. This is bean counter management.

Clueless people up top — removed from the work, and morally repugnant — they made and make the decisions. They committed a terrible, terrible crime and were pardoned by the criminal regime in Washington, DC.

Fortunately, due the other stupid decision make by the administration, nobody wants Boeing airplanes. This would have happened without tariffs, because who wants the liability of flying a known death trap? Furthermore, SOME people — and a few even in executive positions — actually value human life.

Government, Too

It’s the same for government. When the U.S. government provided steady funding and didn’t interfere with the engineers, NASA managed to send 4 astronauts to the surface of the moon and return them safely to the Earth in 1969. An astounding feat. Oh, yes.

Management DOES play a role — they keep the funding going and get the actual working people whatever they need to get the job done.

NASA did that. And TWO crews met Kennedy’s seemingly impossible deadline by getting two crews to the moon and back before the end of the decade.

But things went south after that.

Since then, every new administration mucks around with NASA, changing its objectives and providing inconsistent or insufficient funding.

Under these conditions NASA could not operate properly. Politicians and the Pentagon required more and more capabilities for the Space Shuttle with the result being a hobbled multi-purpose vehicle that did nothing well.

Danger was built into the design because it was designed by a ridiculous committee of interests, none of whom understood (or cared about) the complexity of the challenge, or the danger to the crews.

And then we started sending politicians up — Bill Nelson and Jake Garn — into orbit in very expensive junkets. Today, the engineers in NASA are STILL very good, but they are very frustrated.

The SLS is a perfect example. After designing and building rockets ordered by the government and then seeing them cancelled by the next administration — which happened frequently — NASA designed a more configurable rocket. They did this, I suspect, in the hope that when a new administration decided we need to go to, say, an asteroid, not the moon or Mars, they wouldn’t need to throw away yet another painstakingly designed rocket.

Because adaptability costs more than a rocket with a clear unchangeable function, the SLS cost a lot more than any other project like it.

What happened? The SLS was skewered for costing too much, and the government was lambasted for inefficiency. So, the SLS is slated to be cancelled. Now, the SLS rocket IS expensive but it’s very, very powerful and — unlike Starship — it works.

In a sane world, we would cancel Starship and go with SLS. Except that the SLS is an orphaned vehicle. The company that built it — Boeing — has been replaced by a company that makes money, not vehicles that fly.

What To Do?

Well, as long as clueless ego-maniacal fools are in charge, we can’t do much. We are working to get rid of them. But in the meantime, we can simply point out the truth.
Management — even well-meaning and thoughtful management — does not and cannot know how to get the job done. The proper role of competent management is to fully support the efforts of line workers. Good management is not a controlling function — it is a supporting function.

This was pointed out by the renowned management expert Dr. W. Edwards Deming decades ago. (I had the privilege of meeting him — twice!) His work has been misrepresented, but I love this quote:

“Export everything except American management — at least not to a friendly country.”
[This quote is from memory so it may not be exactly right, but it’s probably very close.]

We must empower the people who know how to do the job, and are charged with doing it.

We must not let the egos of clueless managers and executives or — God help us! — shareholders get in the way.