The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

by Ben Horowitz

By managing the organization as though it were a black box, some divisions at HP optimized the present at the expense of their downstream competitiveness. The company rewarded managers for achieving short-term objectives in a manner that was bad for the company.

Like technical debt, management debt is incurred when you make an expedient, short-term management decision with an expensive, long-term consequence.