> It's also engineers not understanding the purpose and goals of the business.
This is a oft-repeated canard which is untrue 99% of the time. By the very decision to join a company, the Engineer has signaled that he understands the business' purpose and goals. Only after joining a company does he come to see that the process of execution towards the said objectives is untenable.
The problem is almost always the enduring fiction in Management teaching that one can manage a business without knowing much about the domain in which the business operates. This false belief becomes fatal the more technical the domain is since the non-linearity of the effects due to events in the domain is what makes or breaks a business.
This is a oft-repeated canard which is untrue 99% of the time. By the very decision to join a company, the Engineer has signaled that he understands the business' purpose and goals. Only after joining a company does he come to see that the process of execution towards the said objectives is untenable.
The problem is almost always the enduring fiction in Management teaching that one can manage a business without knowing much about the domain in which the business operates. This false belief becomes fatal the more technical the domain is since the non-linearity of the effects due to events in the domain is what makes or breaks a business.
Relevant Reading:
1) A radical article from HBR, First, Let’s Fire All the Managers : https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers
2) Speech by Dave Packard to HP Managers (1960) - https://gizmodo.com/the-hp-way-how-bill-hewlett-and-i-built-... (this is one of my favourites)
3) Also see the book Why we do what we do: Understanding Self-motivation by Edward Deci and his Self-Determination Theory(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory) for insights.