Whenever I see people making the "get your stuff done", I think of sports teams. Owners don't tell players, "The goal is to win the super bowl. Go figure it out." They hire managers, exercise physicians, and dozens of other specialists that prescribe detailed programs of physical training, practice, and even what to eat, to maximize performance.
The point is that management has value. Someone has to do the work, of course. But someone also has to figure out how to organize everyone, ensure things are done in the right order, the right people are meeting, and communicating, and such, and yes, tell people whether they're doing enough work, or need to be doing more, and maybe even when to show up for work, or how late to stay. Management's job is to connect the highest-level goals with the actions of the people lower down in the organization, and that very much includes things like controlling the quantity of work and how long people are in the chair/at the screen.
I'm not saying management is always done well (it's not) or that you can never have too much (you can). Only that, most people don't want to be told "Go run a business. Figure it out." They need milestones and pacing and to have huge nebulous goals broken down into smaller chunks that can be measured and scheduled. People want to know how to do the job well, whether they're doing enough, and whether things are on schedule. That's management.
If you don't like it, there are plenty of career paths like outside sales, consulting, or others where you get to more or less make your own hours.
I see where you're coming from, but I think there's a categorical difference between those two.
The first you want to maximize, the second is a (blunt) tool to achieve the first.
If people prefer to work 4 hours in the morning and 3 in the night, vs 8 hours in one go, vs 10 hours of low focus vs 5 hours of hyperfocus, it should be up to them, provided they deliver.
As a manager, it's your job to suggest something, but also to understand not everyone works the same way.
I think OP's point is delivery is a function of others' work habits. If everyone on your team works 8 hours straight, and you're doing 6 to 10AM and then 7 to 10PM, you're running uphill. Flip the defaults and those working 9 to 4 lose. Forcing this entanglement is management's job.
4 day work weeks just look sensible to me. A massive privilege, for sure, given most people will still have to work 5+ days a week for the foreseeable future. But honestly the difference to my life (for the periods of time I've pulled it off) of having a 3- vs a 2-day weekend is ... transformative. And I'm better at my job for it.
A 4-day workweek arguably puts MORE emphasis on everyone in the company knowing exactly what they need to be doing. The company needs to be better run, to take advantage of the productivity boost of happier/better rested/more motivated employees 4 days /wk.
Nobody is saying all management is useless - what's being discussed is different philosophies of management.
And I doubt the manager telling you to sit down for 8 hours straight will get more output out of you compared to the one that tell you to get output done by X, working in your own time.
All the problems with performance in companies I've seen were either due to staff motivation (caused by personal reasons, low pay, working on a shitty codebase / project, bored of the same job after years) or because management was forcing too many meetings or not having clear requirements or changing requirements up all the time (being agile still has a cost, even if you stopped writing documentation).
They provide the facilities and a prescriptive plan to get the team where they need to be game ready. Drills, strategy and ensuring everyone is operating as a team on the field.
Tuning their body is the responsibility of the player. The teams aren’t sending them a list of what to eat, how to train or what exercises to do. That’s on the athlete.
Of course they do have specialists to help if the players needs but it’s not “total control for performance”
This is definitely not the case in European football. A single player can cost a team £100m in transfer fees, wages and agent commissions. It is in the club's interest to make sure that player is fit enough to play as many games in the season as possible. Players have curfews and will be fined by their club if they're spotted drinking alcohol or eating pizza after hours. There are vacation days and 'cheat days', but otherwise diets and lifestyle are tightly restricted.
It wasn't like that 25 years ago, when club football was simply a multi-million dollar sport instead of a global, multi-billion-dollar empire. Alcoholism was rife in the English league, as were poor diets due to the absence of coaches and managers who understood the importance of nutritional science.