What is managerial obscurantism?

French version of this article : https://www.excellence-decisionnelle.com/2026/05/09/obscurantisme-managerial/

As Michel Bundock explains in this article, a company’s growth rests on three pillars: product innovation, process innovation, and managerial innovation. If the product is what you sell, and the process is how you make it, management is the way the organization sets itself in motion. Without this third pillar, even the best ideas lose steam in silos and bureaucracy.

Managerial innovation is not merely a superficial change. It operates along four main dimensions:

• Governance: Redefining who makes decisions and how legitimacy is established.
• Structure: Evolving roles and reducing hierarchical drag.
• Processes: Streamlining the flow of information, accelerating trade-offs and decisions, and optimizing meetings.
• Culture: Building trust, the right to take initiative, autonomy, psychological safety, and continuous learning.

The goal is to remove the human obstacles—slowness, opacity, and rigidity—that stand in the way of strategic agility. AI is an accelerator of managerial innovation because it automates the mechanical tasks of control and analysis. It frees managers to focus on what matters most: people.

Managerial innovation is at the heart of most of my books, especially my latest one, Decision-Making Excellence. This book can be summed up as follows: anyone who fails to innovate managerially in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment leaves every decision on collective stakes to chance. No one wants to be a decision-maker who is sometimes lucky and sometimes unlucky. We all want to be good.

Yet the price to pay is… managerial innovation. And each of us can see that there are a few “small” problems when it comes to moving from intention to action. In the past 25 years, I have never heard anyone say that we should not innovate technically or socially. But while technical innovations create external challenges, because customers must be convinced, managerial innovations create internal challenges, because the people who must be convinced are… MANAGERS.

I Resist, You Resist, WE Resist!

We can legitimately resist a decision when it is designed in an ivory tower: a brilliant decision that is not easy to implement may not be quite as brilliant as it seems. When faced with a disconnected, top-down decision, it is normal for us to resist. That is not obscurantism.

We also resist the implementation of managerial skills. For this reason, the ROI of management training is low when there is no support system in place, such as coaching or team-based co-development.

In the case of management training, we can observe two types of resistance:

1. A weak and temporary form of resistance when it involves replacing one technique with another, or doing something we were not doing before. For example setting SMART goals, being factual in an evaluation, adapting one’s management style to employees’ skills and motivation, and so on. If the manager is not an expert who accepted a promotion simply to earn more money without being truly motivated to manage a team, then sooner or later, with training, he or she will integrate these skills. The resistance may become strong if we are dealing with managers who remain in an expert posture. I accept the promotion to become a manager, but I keep acting like an expert even after three training programs.
2. A strong and lasting form of resistance in the face of managerial innovation, because it means doing the exact opposite of what we have been doing since the beginning of our careers, and sometimes since the beginning of our lives. It is no longer simply about doing things DIFFERENTLY—the goal becomes SMART. We must do the OPPOSITE DIFFERENTLY… otherwise it would not be a managerial innovation. Most of the time, this means changing both our toolkit AND our paradigm. We are forced to transform our vision of management. For example going around the table when we enjoy verbal ping-pong; starting meetings in writing when we prefer oral exchanges; using feedforward instead of feedback to express disagreement; co-constructing change instead of managing change; asking questions before looking for solutions; speaking last when we are the chief; and so on.

Science Tells Us That…

Resistance to managerial innovation is strong and enduring, even though its scientific foundation is not in dispute, whether in psychology, sociology, neuroscience, or, of course, management science. For example, science tells us that:

• We have unconscious cognitive biases that distort our perception of reality, and that the only way to limit their impact is to have a decision-making system—such as complex decision architecture—and a group with a diversity of stakeholders who know the ground well >> books on cognitive biases and on managing collective intelligence.
• Authority bias requires that the chief always speak last, after several rounds when everyone says, “I’ll pass” >> books on cognitive biases.
• Negative feedback within a decision-making sequence creates psychological insecurity, which over time leads to a wall of silence >> Amy Edmondson’s book.
• Writing before speaking—the Silent Meeting—improves creativity and problem-solving >> a study by Steven G. Rogelberg and Liana Kreamer published in the Harvard Business Review in 2019.
• Speaking time must be distributed—through oral or written round-table techniques; quieter people must be brought into the conversation, especially through writing; and the environment must feel “safe,” notably through feedforward >> books on managing collective intelligence, including the work of Mehdi Moussaïd, a cognitive science researcher.
• We must ask questions—Problem Questioning—before looking for solutions—Problem Solving >> the principle of problem framing.

We will not attempt a full inventory here, both to avoid weighing down this article and, above all, to avoid depriving academics of their bread and butter. But every manager must choose between science and managerial obscurantism.

To Choose Is to Give Something Up!

Obscurantism means preferring that certain things remain in the shadows, because the light of knowledge threatens a form of power, a belief, a habit, or a kind of intellectual comfort. An obscurantist adopts different postures:

• The refusal to look at data that contradicts a belief
• A closed attitude toward any form of questioning
• The defense of a tradition solely because it is old
• The preservation of ineffective practices despite solid evidence

Obscurantism represents the antithesis of progress through knowledge. By extension, today it refers to any refusal of progressive behavior in a particular field, whether scientific, moral, social… or managerial.

The obscurantist does not say, “I reject the truth.” He is much more subtle:

• “It’s not that simple.”
• “We’ve always done it this way, and we’re doing pretty well!”
• “That may be science, but we know experts can be wrong.”
• “Those are nice theories, but people aren’t ready for that.”
• “That will never work here; we’re different.”
• “Everyone in our industry does it this way. We can’t all be wrong!”

Some of these statements may be legitimate in certain contexts, but they become obscurantist when they are used to confirm what we already thought before starting a training program that introduces innovative management techniques. With these elements in mind, we can now define managerial obscurantism:

Managerial obscurantism refers to the tendency of a manager
or an organization to maintain old, ineffective, or scientifically fragile practices, even when more robust knowledge, proven methods, or observable results point to the need for change.

The methods presented above have been tested and proven, yet they remain poorly disseminated because of managerial obscurantism. For this reason, they therefore still fall under the category of managerial innovation, even though some of these methods are 200,000 years old, such as going around the table orally. Because they are not widely used, managers never see themselves as nasty “obscurantists.” They see themselves as pragmatic, experienced, cautious, realistic. They justify themselves with the badge of “common sense from the ground.”

Managerial obscurantism is the explicit or implicit refusal to evolve one’s management practices despite the existence of knowledge, evidence, experience, or indicators showing that another way of deciding, facilitating, collaborating, or learning would be more effective, more responsible, or better suited to complexity.

>> The refusal is therefore sometimes implicit: leaving a training session convinced, then returning to one’s routines and simply letting the approach die in the drawer of good intentions.

>> The refusal may also be cultural: an organization may encourage managers to attend training, while subsequently rewarding the very behaviors that prevent innovation—excessive control, constant urgency, top-down meetings, the absence of any right to make mistakes, distrust of the human sciences, the cult of the all-knowing boss, and so on.

Seven Reasons to Resist!

Managers resist managerial innovation for seven main reasons:

1. The status quo bias: an irrational preference for existing practices or ideas. It shows up in statements such as “We’ve always done it this way”; “It isn’t perfect, but it works”; “The teams aren’t ready”; “We’ll see later—now isn’t the right time.” This bias pushes us to prefer a mediocre but familiar practice over a better but uncomfortable one.
2. Loss aversion bias: a new practice promises gains through better cooperation, stronger decisions, and greater engagement. But the manager immediately perceives the potential losses: loss of control, loss of apparent expertise, loss of time at the outset, loss of symbolic status, and the risk of looking awkward in front of the team. Managerial innovation is often sold as a gain, but experienced as a threat.
3. Cognitive dissonance: the psychological discomfort that arises when there is a contradiction between beliefs, behaviors, and available information. Faced with two contradictory pieces of information—“I speak first” and “I should speak last”—our brain will erase one of them. It will probably erase the more recent one, but to do so, it must convince itself that it is being rational: “That training was interesting, but too theoretical”; “The trainer doesn’t understand our reality”; “My teams mainly want us to make decisions quickly”; “Collective intelligence is fine when you have the time.” Managerial obscurantism does not openly deny knowledge; it neutralizes it by making it inapplicable.
4. The fear of becoming a beginner again: any serious innovation requires a temporary regression in competence. The experienced manager becomes awkward again. He/she must learn to ask better questions, listen deeply, structure a discussion, or accept that his/her idea is not always the best one. Training fails because managers must temporarily move through a visible zone of incompetence. For a manager whose identity is built on mastery, authority, and the ability to decide quickly, this zone is psychologically costly… whereas obscurantism is less costly.
5. Temperament and personality traits influence the adoption of innovation. In the MBTI, if you have a preference for S—sensing, tangible, proven methods—you are more at risk of resisting managerial innovation than if you are N—intuition, the new. The problem is that, overall, we are roughly 70% S and 30% N. Since this is a preference, nothing is fixed or insurmountable, but it slows the adoption process and may contribute to its long-term collapse.
6. Neurodivergent or atypical profiles have divergent thinking, which favors the adoption of technical, social, and managerial innovations. They are a small minority, around 15% of the population. Like N profiles in the MBTI, we find them on Everett Rogers’s diffusion curve in the categories of innovators and early adopters—the very people who will invent managerial innovations. Conversely, neurotypical or norm-oriented profiles tend to think normatively, meaning in line with dominant social or cognitive norms. They are therefore less open to managerial innovation. This is not a question of intelligence or intellectual power, but of one’s relationship to norms. One can be absolutely brilliant and neurotypical. Creativity techniques exist because 85% of people do not naturally know how to diverge. Neurodivergent people do not need these techniques.
7. Managerial innovations are not always applicable in every situation. There are situations where we absolutely must continue as before, often in the realm of operational excellence. Managers will therefore be asked to continue giving feedback in operations in order to move as fast as possible, but to stop using feedback in decision-making because it is less effective than feedforward. One must speak last in a decision-making sequence, but one can still speak whenever one wants in other meetings. This requires situational intelligence, intellectual flexibility, and, above all, solid training in order to become a paradoxical manager—the only way to escape the cognitive fog that pushes us toward routines rather than science.

Managers are less resistant to managerial innovation when it applies to operational excellence—productivity, Scrum, Lean management—because the point is to innovate in order to run faster. These innovations have a more visible impact, one that is easier to measure in sales and production. They are therefore easier to impose. By contrast, managers resist managerial innovation more strongly when it applies to decision-making excellence, especially in collective stakes, because everyone knows something, but no one knows for sure. It is difficult to objectively quantify the impact of an innovation on the quality of a decision. Whether the manager speaks first or last, he/she will always be able to blame his/her team or boss. Managerial obscurantism disappears when the goal is to run fast, but it is extremely powerful when the goal is to run in the right direction. Indeed, it is easier for decision-makers to impose innovations that help others run faster than to impose on themselves innovations that help everyone run in the right direction.

That said, we are all—especially the author of this article—VICTIMS of the status quo bias, loss aversion bias, cognitive dissonance, the fear of becoming beginners again, our temperament, our preferences, and paradoxical management. The question is not whether we are victims, but how long we will agree to remain so after gaining access to better practices. The goal is not a brutal change, but a gradual implementation with an action plan that is both ambitious AND realistic.

In a complex environment, continuing to manage solely with traditional practices becomes a professional risk—for us and for our organization. We must choose between two risks: the risk of testing a new practice and the risk of maintaining an outdated one. In unstable environments, the key skill becomes the ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn. Our experience is a resource, but it becomes an obstacle when it demands that the future resemble the past.

Refusing to experiment is not pragmatism. Pragmatism does not mean saying, “I’ll keep what I know.” It means saying, “I’ll keep what works better after testing it seriously.”

Refusing to experiment is easy for a manager because it is the teams who will pay the highest price for the preservation of managerial routines. By protecting ourselves, we expose our employees to the risk of a toxic work environment, leading to retention problems and low levels of engagement.

Managerial obscurantism begins when past experience is granted more authority than the available evidence. The concept of obscurantism allows us to name that precise moment: the moment when knowledge is available, but action does not follow. A manager, however, is responsible not only for results, but also for the quality of the practices through which those results are achieved.

We could model the risk of managerial Obscurantism (O) as the product of attachment to Routines (R) and Ignorance of the available evidence (I), weighted by the Complexity of the environment (C):

O = (R x I)^C

In a simple environment, obscurantism has little impact. But in a complex environment, where C is high, the risk explodes exponentially.

Managerial innovation is grounded in science, but also and, above all, in… common sense, because science teaches us to exercise managerial common sense. Do we really want the comfort of our habits to become more important than the quality of our decisions and the performance of our teams? To answer that question, I invite you to take this assessment questionnaire : https://decision-making-excellence.com/test/managerial-obscurantism.html

Five Conditions for Implementing Managerial Innovation Quickly and Sustainably

1. Training in new management techniques based on experiential learning: situations brought by the participants rather than fake simulations built around cases proposed by the trainer. The learning process must be adapted accordingly: presentation of the method, practice on a real case, debriefing, then presentation of the scientific evidence.
2. A post-training certification process, including a multiple-choice test to confirm that the manager actually took part in the training rather than processing emails—validation of acquired knowledge—and a lessons-learned document presenting the implementation of one or two methods: date of implementation, with whom, for what objective, what results, observed changes, and difficulties encountered. Certification must be mandatory; otherwise, you will simply certify those who would have implemented the training content anyway. The goal is to convert “pragmatic managers” into “practicing managers” and to signal ambition at the organizational level: a must-have rather than a nice-to-have.
3. The Tea Strategy: infuse change rather than diffuse it. Train N profiles and neurodivergent profiles first, because they will not resist. They will become an “internal scientific proof” of the effectiveness of innovative practices. However, they must not become the “champions” or ambassadors of these new methods by engaging in internal proselytizing. If they do, they will simply be crushed by the neurotypical majority. On the contrary, they must ignore the rest of the organization and focus on implementing the techniques within their own area of responsibility. They will then become an anchoring point for training the early majority. The goal is a gentle transformation, first at the individual level, with everyone moving at their own pace. We must be ambitious AND realistic.
4. Managerial obscurantism, as described in this article, is a nudge that will help reduce the risks of regression while new practices are being infused within the organization. You now know the purpose of this article and the ultimate aim of the concept of managerial obscurantism. A nudge refers to a gentle method that consists of modifying the architecture of choices in order to subtly encourage an individual to adopt a behavior or make a desirable decision. In our case, the point is to create a communication framework that steers managers toward SCIENCE rather than toward the preservation of routines. You will move faster and go further with this nudge, which should be presented at the end of the training and then used as a way to attract more volunteers to participate in the training.
5. Artificial intelligence is the ideal cognitive partner to support managers in implementing managerial innovations. You do not have the resources to place a coach beside every manager, but generative AI can contribute to that support. The approach is described in my latest book, Artificial Intelligence Architect. Neurodivergent people are the ones who use AI the most and the best. They simply need to be encouraged to rely on AI in order to move faster in implementing their action plan. Note that AI will foster divergent thinking in your organization more quickly and effectively than creativity techniques. As such, it will promote organizational divergence and therefore the adoption of managerial innovations: a two-in-one effect. Instead of diverging from time to time, AI will help us diverge every day, provided we know how to “prompt managerially.”

To go further on the theme of managerial innovation, Decision-Making Excellence:

---

Subscribe to this blog to receive new posts…