Material Design is just like Apple's guidelines. It's great for helping to create something that looks uniformly designed and not a hodge podge of UI gimmicks, helping design-ignorant coders create something that looks nice, and as you say it's easy to get management buy in, but is it actually good? Will following it actually reduce your count of UI mistakes? Personally I don't like it at all, and I've had many complaints, both functional and from personal preference, with Google's design changes over the last few years.