Several unrelated events have sent my mind to ruminating on corporate management. My thoughts converge on a few points. Legal and personal requirements often lead managers into holding too much information too close to the vest. Instead of distilling these limitations into more general guidelines for employees, managers often head in the opposite direction, demanding ever more information from employees in an attempt to make ever more decisions. This invariably fails, in small ways and massive ways. Where managers should focus their data gathering energies is often on the complaints of their teams. Many complaints lack solutions, but the same powers for filtering and generalizing incoming information will serve managers far better by listening for problems to solve. In my young life, I have already seen talent flee complaint-deaf managers at several companies in several cities. Employees, like voters, are not as facile as the rapacious would hope. Repeatedly we see and hear praise for the straight shooter, yet like value investors, no greater numbers ever seem to try to imitate them.