I actually totally agree with all of this, and these are the positive takeaways from the Phoenix Project. It was actually a valuable read despite my ribbing re:

I actually totally agree with all of this, and these are the positive takeaways from the Phoenix Project. It was actually a valuable read despite my ribbing re: prose. There are many things people do wrong with known work/repeatable steps that can't be rightfully laid at the feet of Phoenix Project-type thinking. But the one that can is that I think it ignores is that I rarely do known work with repeatable steps, because I'm programming: whenever this happens, it's because we've made tactical errors in stakeholder management and now I don't have time to automate them - but it has been a long time since my last reading, so it is possible that I've forgotten some sections that make substantial concessions in this area. A thoughtful, sensible reading definitely leads to your last paragraph even if the writers don't explicitly call it out, but I simply know for a fact that most of the managers I meet don't understand the difference between producing widgets and designing systems.