This is the nature of management. Decisions are made, usually for good reasons, which in turn prompt other decisions. So when problems arise - and they always do - disentangling them is not as simple as correcting the original error. Often, finding a solution is a multi-step endeavor. There is the problem you know you are trying to solve - think of that as an oak tree - and then there are all the other problems - think of these as saplings - that sprouted from the acorns that fell around it. And these problems remain after you cut the oak tree down.

There are two major errors with that line of thinking. The first is overestimating what you, the manager, are capable of. Yes, it may be within your power to solve a wide variety of issues, but as a single individual, you can’t solve that many of them. The best work comes from those who have the time to live and breathe a problem fully, who can dedicate themselves to finding the best solution.

The second error is assuming that nobody wants to take on hard problems. In fact, the most talented employees aren’t looking for special treatment or “easy” projects. They want to be challenged. There is no greater sign of trust than handing your report an intricately tangled knot that you believe she can pull apart, even if you’re not sure how.

Of course management theories change — when the foundations of the problem are constantly shifting, the answers are bound to change.

If you translate this problem into the more abstract language of cybernetics, it becomes easier to understand. In the business environment, complexity (environmental variety) will naturally increase. In any given organisational structure, the variety which management systems can bring to bear also increases, but more slowly.*

*If it was possible to measure variety in absolute terms for real-world.

And this story repeats itself through the history of management science; almost every classic of the literature seems to have described a way of adapting systems to a more complicated world, and then to have become obsolete itself. If you look past the slogans and think about what things like ‘management by objectives’, ‘focus on core competences’ and so on actually mean, they are all different ways of advising executives to restructure their businesses so that they don’t generate complexity faster than it can be managed.

When things go wrong with management consultancy, it’s more likely to be because the consultants are tackling a new problem and there isn’t anyone in the company who knows the answer. The consultants get commissioned because they advertise themselves as brains for hire; a company can cut overhead costs by having fewer middle managers performing staff functions in the ordinary course of business and buying in brain power when confronted with a difficult question. When you write this idea down in black and white, it’s pretty easy to see why it won’t work except by pure luck.

The reason is invariably a failure to respect the complexity of the problem. Management problems are complex, high-variety questions, Rubik’s Cubes rather than rows of blocks. In order to solve them, you need to make decisions about how to represent the problem in such a way that you can simplify it and solve it, without losing vital details that will blow your solution apart as soon as it’s implemented.