If you ever want to see ridiculous levels of mismanagement, just have a look at any business school. All the most trendy techniques and analytics, applied in the most inexpert ways, with a disputatious pool of their egomaniac peers second-guessing them at every move. You'd think they'd know you can't run a business on smoke and mirrors, but...

I had a job where many of our new employees were recently-minted MBAs. It was fun taking them out on consulting engagements and letting them apply their brilliance to real-world problems. Then, after they get their asses handed to them, showing them the parts of the job that are learned on the street, not in B-school. But if we ever were handed a case study, I'll bet those people would be right in their element. Instead, what we usually faced were multifactorial problems, conflicting priorities, weird constraints, frustrating compromises and dirty politics.

Some of them learned, some didn't, some left because they didn't make senior VP by the age of 25. Not all were assholes.