You Can Lead a Manager to Order, But You Can't Make Him Think  A
business expert explains why we produce managers who don't know
how to think, and what to do to reverse the trend. By Jeffrey L.
Seglin | Dec 1, 1996   We're producing a whole generation of
middle managers who don't know how to think. That's the
observation of Eileen C. Shapiro, former McKinsey consultant,
author of Fad Surfing in the Boardroom, and cofounder of the
Hillcrest Group, a consulting firm based in Cambridge, Mass.
Here's what she says is at the root of the problem:  "If you
grow up in a dysfunctional family in which decisions are being
made for you, then you can't make decisions. That's essentially
what's happening to managers in large companies that are
outsourcing thinking to consultants. A junior manager doesn't
make a decision until the outside consultant says so. Well, what
happens when those junior managers become middle managers? We're
breeding a whole generation of managers who can't think.
"Implicit in my training in busine