Unfortunately in a lot of environments if you are the kind of person who likes to spend most of their time focusing on politics you can get very far. This is because most of the other people are too busy working to have time to compete with you on a political level. I think this is why we see a certain percentage of destructive people in leadership positions. The only way to sort this out is from the top. But often the people at the top are also too busy to figure out what's going on. It's a weakness in the system that incompetent people can exploit.
Good management is rare because the payoff can be longer. The benefits of an hour of week of investments by a manager today mostly accrue to others in a longer time horizon. It rarely helps this quarters numbers.<p>Good management is also very hard to measure, as it’s not on a scale like technical skills. A good manager in peaceful times can be too soft in tough times.
This is all true and extremely relevant to the software industry. If anyone is interested in learning more about effective management based on these ideas, I recommend the book, "First, Break All the Rules," which is based on the same Gallup research that informs this article.