Imagine a large ship listing to one side, taking on water and going in circles. A helicopter lands and managers pile out. “We’ve got this,” they say.
They form committees. Create dashboards. Implement processes to monitor the rising water.
But nobody plugs the hole in the boat. In fact, the new managers create a 12-step approval process just to access repair equipment. A sailor with a bucket gets reprimanded for “unauthorized water removal activities.”
The ship keeps sinking.
A second group of managers arrives, admitting, “The boat is sinking, but we’re managing every detail of the process.” They meticulously plan lifeboat access, only to take all the spots themselves, leaving the crew and passengers to drown as the ship goes down.
Years later, it’s discovered the ship sank because managers eliminated the feedback loops where junior staff could report small leaks.
This is “managed decline,” – the art of overseeing failure with exceptional documentation. Managed decline hides under terms like cost control, risk minimization, and streamlining, but it guarantees one thing: job security for managers. The EU and UK exemplify this, where managed economic entropy and decline have become a boon for the managerial class. Managers multiply like Gremlins in water.
The Soviet Union mastered this too before collapsing. Farmers couldn’t plant crops without approvals from officials who reported to managers who answered to ministries. The result? A grain shortfall, despite ample, fertile land and labor.
Big Tech, banking, and media in the U.S. (Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Intel, X, Disney) have recently started getting wise to this, culling middle-management roles. Not because they aren’t smart or hardworking but because layers of decision makers don’t fix holes in ships.
The question isn’t, “how do we manage this problem better?” It’s “who is going to stand up right now and fix the hole?” We don’t need better management systems. We need to recognize when management itself is the problem.
The people who will save the ship are the ones carrying buckets and patch kits, ready to get wet.
