It’s like everything else though, you just have to hope those who were stuffed around don’t move forward to stuff around others and actually learn from the mistakes of those they worked with.

Thanks for sharing the story, I’ve heard of ‘Who Moved My Cheese’ and it’s funny to see it in that context!

It is a cliche that in underperforming businesses, the CEO surrounds themselves with “yes-men”. The ability to listen to uncomfortable questions might be good for the business. Times change and the paradigms of yesterday may not be good for today. Junior employees are more frequently in contact with a company’s customers than anyone on the board. Despite their “ignorance” they know what the company does right and wrong.

I recall working for a software company that eventually was on the verge of failure before being bought out. They were a leading playing in their field until the internet bubble came around. Then they vastly over-invested in an internet presence (a non-core activity) while neglecting software development. This allowed competitors to catch up. When the bubble burst they hurriedly attempted to repair the damage. This involved sacking or demoting all the managers who had pointed out the previous neglect and replacing them with people who would “change the business”. After the face workers started questioning the absurdity of some of the new decisions, they decided that morale was the big problem and bought every single employee a copy of the Management text book “Who moved my Cheese“, a book that recommends we trust our betters because (pace your comment) they know what they are doing.

No single moment crystallizes their arrogant stupidity more than the meeting at which we all got our copy. Far from being experts, they clearly didn’t know what they were doing and had learned the habit of punishing those people who asked awkward questions or pointed out flaws. Under these conditions the best people left and the company was soon swallowed by a rival.

Your belief in philosopher kings is not a new one.