The Most Underrated Concept: Interdependence

It is not lost on me that I’m writing this as layoffs continue to climb in both the US federal government as part of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort and also here in Silicon Valley. Large, profitable corporations (like Meta) are laying off their so-called “bottom 5%” of their employees.

Today’s post continues the Mistakes of Mainstream Management (MMM) series (Chapter 12) and explores how lack of understanding of the concept of interdependence results in ineffective organizational design, goal setting and overall decision making of mainstream management.

Table of Contents

• How to shoot oneself in the foot?

• Interdependence

• The Myth of the Rockstar

• Pareto Principle

• Mean is Meaningless!

How to shoot oneself in the foot?

Deming and Drucker are the two big names quoted often in Silicon Valley leadership circles when it comes to management thinkers. So, I was curious to know what they thought about the concept of interdependence.

These two are typically pitted against each other: Dr. Edwards Deming (who made the call to abolish Management by Objectives (MBO)) and the Management Guru, Peter Drucker (who first popularized MBO, which folks in Tech. might now recognize as OKRs).

But, when you dig into their works, they were not opposed to each other on the topic of today’s post: Interdependence. Here is an excerpt from Dr. Deming’s book, 'The New Economics' in which he articulates of how manufacturing companies typically shoot themselves in the foot: