When you work as a system analyst in large organisations systems you really see some pretty bad cases of over-optimistic managers.

@Eric "perhaps it's the manner in which they question things that needs changing".

About 20 years ago we saw great strides in the Quality domain. Japan, in particular, at a national level went from a status of "producer of poor quality" to being a producer of "quality products".

One of the most important factors in the change is that they simply "started to apply quality management theory" instead of managing by the seats of their pants.

If managers managed according to management science instead of going by the seat of their pants we would see major improvements.