[titannet]

I agree and also think the author did a wrong turn somewhere after the original quote. One point of the quote roughly translated into the modern office is that dumb managers that create pointless busywork for others are part of big corporations and all together not a big deal as long as they are lazy dumb managers. Energetic dumb managers on the other hand may create a neverending spiral of problems and need to be watched carefully.

(On a sidenote there are several versions of the quote attributed to German generals - Moltke the elder, von Mannstein and von Hammerstein-Equord and I think most of them are better).