Management buzzwords can kill, or help

Is there anything worse than not having a best-practices organization? An organization that pays lip service to best practices, doesn't have the necessary training to do best-practices, and does superficial things to show best practices on paper.

It is better to do a few things in a correct fashion than do a multitude of things ostensibly. - Says no one these days.

— Vic Divecha (@vic_divecha) June 10, 2013

Upper management may hypnotized by buzzwords and trends. Every buzzword or trend has grown organically with years of hard work by those who made them icons of success: Agile, team-work, collaboration, Lean, TQM… I could go on. Each of these need education, dedication, training and understanding of upper management.
It is better to do a few things in a correct fashion than do a multitude of things ostensibly. However, we live in an age where well meaning professionals, managers and entire organizations are forced into a culture of "paper" success that involves busy work in multiple projects.
If an organization is dependent on shareholders, satisfying short-sighted demands takes priority. If an organization is funded by federal grants, than making impractical lofty promises in the grant proposal wins money. The time between grants is spent scrambling to achieve the necessary documentation to be refunded.
When I first came to Michigan, I saw this deteriorated culture of research work and was deeply saddened by the helplessness of the cogs in the mechanism. The issue continues today as well and I hope I can be an instrument of solutions, rather than become a cog in this wheel.