Laurence Peter proposed his principle in 1969 as satire. Fifty-six years later, most organisations are still running on the exact system he was mocking. The Peter Principle: “In a hierarchy, …
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Gall’s Law: Why Your Transformation Programme Will Fail
John Gall was a paediatrician. Not an obvious source of management wisdom. But in 1975 he wrote something about complex systems that should be required reading for every executive who has ever …
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Brooks’ Law: Why Hiring Won’t Fix Your Delivery Problem
In 1975, Fred Brooks published The Mythical Man-Month. Fifty years later, it remains the most consistently ignored book in software engineering. Brooks’ Law: “Adding manpower to a late …
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Goodhart’s Law: Why Your Metrics Are Lying to You
Charles Goodhart was a British economist. In 1975, he observed something about monetary policy that turned out to apply to almost everything in management. Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure …
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Conway’s Law: Why Your Org Chart Is Your Product Architecture
In 1967, Mel Conway published a paper that nobody in management has read — but that explains more about why products fail than any product management framework I know. Conway’s Law: “Any …
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The Laws They Don’t Teach: Six Mental Models Every Tech Leader Needs
Nobody put these on the syllabus. You did not learn them in your MBA, your computer science degree, or your first management training programme. They come from sociology, systems theory, military …
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