You have to fix dysfunctional management.

Dysfunctional management is immune to being fixed by positive happy Pollyanna spin. The dysfunctional environment becomes even more so, adding delusion to the already unworkable.

What it really takes is superior force -- superior technology, a new-broom-sweeps-clean management change, revolution, a division sell-off and any number of power moves that overwhelm the dysfunctional management to subsume them out of existence to replace what's broken.

I worked for an IT Manager who (unknown to us at the time) had schizoaffective disorder, meaning he had the worst of both schizophrenia and bipolar disease. He was also an alcoholic to boot. He did odd things. No one could ever understand his decisions. He was always at odds with the other managers (not that they weren't really terrible too). He was showing up drunk at work and the IT Manager gave him an ultimatum: Quit drinking on the job or just quit. He quit. Now you'd think that would be the end of it, but someone nice over in accounting had been nice to him. He began stalking her. Big mistake. Her husband was the sheriff's deputy. A court order followed. He was in and out of the mental ward. He finally died alone. I remember that he had left a voice mail on my work phone in the middle of the night wanting to get together with me to go drinking (apparently he didn't realize I didn't drink). I worked elsewhere by that time and by the time I got in the next morning to call him, he didn't remember leaving the call.

Now when I speak of absolute truth, it's like this: They guy was absolutely nuts.

I've worked for such creepy weirdoes my whole career, so when I see discussions of competent management, I have more than a vague suspicion that either it's fantasy, from an alternate universe or from long, long ago and far away. It's management of this sort that Dr. Phil's new book, "Life Code: The New Rules for Winning in the Real World" was written and the world described by Robert Jackall's "Moral Mazes". I lived as a manager in a misfortune 50 "Moral Mazes" corporation. It's quite a shock to see psychopaths managing a Corporation and quite a wonder that business succeeds at all these days. There's quite a lot of slop in the system, and since all the environments seem to be so dysfunctional, they're pretty much on an equal footing -- which is why I surmise they work at all.

I appreciate the folks at ZDNet: Most of them are a cut above the narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths, nutjobs and weirdoes running our businesses and government. It is always a pleasure to have a meeting of the minds of those who actually seem to have some sort of moral core with integrity. From my view, while it is refreshing, such people are of a dying breed and the rest of the world has moved on to chaos where everything is negotiable, filled with moveable morals negotiating the fiords of stupidity.

If there is a solution other than absolute power to overwhelm dysfunctional management I would certainly like to entertain it.

Perhaps that is a discussion for another time.