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Most executives are complete imbeciles when it comes to the actual work their organizations do.

That sounds obvious, but here's the thing: that's what a tautologically good manager does.

They delegate and hire subordinates to do a job. It is by design that the communication won't involve 100% of the work done

You hire people to do a job, not to be a remote controlled puppet

Maybe it’s not a binary? Maybe managers should both be able to delegate AND occasionally put in the effort to learn how things are working on the ground? Otherwise after about 3 layers of hierarchy all of the signal is gone in a massive game of telephone, leaving high level executives completely clueless.

Yes, sure, good managers will want to know (some of that)

But that want is limited (needs to be), and also it depends on the IC to explain things

Sounds like laziness to me

Delegation does not have to be because of a lack of knowledge. In fact, it seems like if one delegates for this reason its probably a sign of trouble to come. We delegate because of lack of time.

I guess its impossible for an executive to know ALL the details of the work they delegate, but I'd be willing to wager that executives who understand the details function better in the long run.

It certainly isn't tautological that executives be imbeciles about the businesses they run.

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