There are several mistakes that I keep seeing over and over again.
Short term-ism. It seems to stem from the need to report financially on an annual basis, which means everything gets tied to that - bonuses, sales discounts, hiring, project deadlines. The reality is that many extremely worthwhile things take longer to do than whatever time is left in this financial period and are harmed by trying to shortcut, sometimes irreparably. Tying everything to an arbitrary accounting period often encourages behaviour from management that is counter productive in the longer term. Yes a company has to report, but it doesn't have to treat those end of year numbers like they are the basis for everything.
Distrust. Often management simply do not trust their employees to know better than them. I've seen senior management who haven't got their hands dirty for two decades overruling far more qualified and experienced people on technical and operational decisions inappropriately with disastrous consequences (e.g. a new product suite developed over five years for a 9 figure sum arrives on the market on a legacy platform with far less functionality than what it is attempting to replace). Usually this stems a senior manager assessing risks poorly where they are in unfamiliar territory.
Lack of empathy. I've lost count of the number of initiatives and re-organisations and changes introduced top down style which fail miserably because there is zero engagement from employees. Usually the management have simply forgotten to think about what a change means to them and how it will affect their work. The assumption seems to be if a change makes a business easier for a manager to manage, it must be the right thing - even if that makes the people that do the work less effective. Often there's a drive to make revolutionary changes for the wrong (career enhancing) reasons. Usually it's better to encourage change to happen organically at all levels of the organisation and often it's better to evolve. People are people, if you don't take that into account and empathise you will have a bad time.
Short term-ism. It seems to stem from the need to report financially on an annual basis, which means everything gets tied to that - bonuses, sales discounts, hiring, project deadlines. The reality is that many extremely worthwhile things take longer to do than whatever time is left in this financial period and are harmed by trying to shortcut, sometimes irreparably. Tying everything to an arbitrary accounting period often encourages behaviour from management that is counter productive in the longer term. Yes a company has to report, but it doesn't have to treat those end of year numbers like they are the basis for everything.
Distrust. Often management simply do not trust their employees to know better than them. I've seen senior management who haven't got their hands dirty for two decades overruling far more qualified and experienced people on technical and operational decisions inappropriately with disastrous consequences (e.g. a new product suite developed over five years for a 9 figure sum arrives on the market on a legacy platform with far less functionality than what it is attempting to replace). Usually this stems a senior manager assessing risks poorly where they are in unfamiliar territory.
Lack of empathy. I've lost count of the number of initiatives and re-organisations and changes introduced top down style which fail miserably because there is zero engagement from employees. Usually the management have simply forgotten to think about what a change means to them and how it will affect their work. The assumption seems to be if a change makes a business easier for a manager to manage, it must be the right thing - even if that makes the people that do the work less effective. Often there's a drive to make revolutionary changes for the wrong (career enhancing) reasons. Usually it's better to encourage change to happen organically at all levels of the organisation and often it's better to evolve. People are people, if you don't take that into account and empathise you will have a bad time.