Management Sins: Fatal or Foibles?

Slacker Manager puts a management spin on the Seven Deadly Sins -- pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth. It's more forced than funny.

But here's a wise one on the sins of project management
. I found 'stubborness" particularly honest, and that these sins could apply beyond projects.

There are no lack of entries around management sins. In fact, Google Books has a partial copy of the 1997 edition of "The 7 Fatal Management Sins," by John Collis (sample sin: short-term scare mentality).

The Game Dev blog cites managers for sins like being a dictator, not giving credit and picking the wrong team. Commadot has a short and sweet three-entry list, starting with micromanagement. The Slow Leadership blog takes on Macho management and categorizes almost a dozen of its ills.

Upping the ante, Grockit blogs about 13 common sins of management by Russell Ackoff and Herbert Addison, which includes a link to their free book.

Frankly, most of these things sound like foibles, to me. Is there really such a thing as a fatal management sin?

Michael Fitzgerald

Michael Fitzgerald writes about innovation and other big ideas in business for publications like the New York Times, The Economist, Fast Company, Inc. and CIO. He’s worked as a writer or editor at Red Herring, ZDNet, TechTV and Computerworld, and has received numerous awards as a writer and editor. Most recently, his piece on the hacker collective the l0pht won the 2008 award for best trade piece from the American Society of Journalists and Authors. He was also a 2007 Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellow in Science and Religion.

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