The notion of 'culture' does this. It's a meaningless term. No-one ever says 'we fixed the business culture but the company still isn't delivering', because the

The notion of 'culture' does this. It's a meaningless term. No-one ever says 'we fixed the business culture but the company still isn't delivering', because the culture is always inferred from the results. So as a concept it has no explanatory power whatsoever; it only obfuscates, providing a convenient cover for incompetent managers who can say dumb things like 'culture is hard to change'. I work in the public service where accountability has been transformed from a concrete thing (who is responsible for this?) to a 'value'. So the org chart is set-up so no-one is accountable for anything, the processes are set-up so no-one is accountable for anything, but if you point this out managers will retort that it doesn't matter, because what's really important is that everyone personally commits to the value of accountability which in turn will create a culture of accountability. They've replaced performance reviews with workers writing about how much they embrace accountability (of course the absence of genuine reviews helps ensure no-one can be held accountable for poor performance). I'm increasingly of the opinion that any manager who talks at length about culture is a moron. It's a fuzzy catch-all that can be invoked to explain anything without understanding anything, of great value to the modern manager who typically understands nothing.