Yesterday I read this article in Wired about Apple (no, not the article about Apple you just read, or the one before it, another one) called How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong. Now that is probably the dumbest title ever written, and the backwards logic at play in just those nine words is a good indication of the ridiculousness you'll be barraged with should you continue reading, but that's not what got to me in this article. Nor is it the fact that this is the same regurgitated Apple/Steve Jobs storyline that has appeared a million times before in a million different places. It's not that either.

(But if you do want a pretty good take on that side of the issue, check out John Gruber's article. He is an angry man, and he is right on.)

What got to me, the part that really illustrates a larger trend of totally clueless business journalism (and now business blogging), was this:

And now observers, academics, and even some other companies are taking notes. Because while Apple's tactics may seem like Industrial Revolution relics, they've helped the company position itself ahead of its competitors and at the forefront of the tech industry. Sometimes, evil works.

Over the past 100 years, management theory has followed a smooth trajectory, from enslavement to empowerment. The 20th century began with Taylorism — engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor's notion that workers are interchangeable cogs — but with every decade came a new philosophy, each advocating that more power be passed down the chain of command to division managers, group leaders, and workers themselves. In 1977, Robert Greenleaf's Servant Leadership argued that CEOs should think of themselves as slaves to their workers and focus on keeping them happy.

Let me tell you something, that is not "observers, academics," (and I'll add journalists), following a smooth trajectory. That is observers, academics, and journalists not knowing what the fuck they are talking about. It is them reacting, not undersatnding. They are just taking the successful company-of-the-moment and trying to extract some secret ingredient from their concoction. The answer always changes, because the question is abstract.

Hey, you know what, Apple is really successful, and they have an obsessive CEO. The secret: just add one part obsession to your business, and you can be just as sucessful!

Oh wait, who is this? Google? Where did they come from? Their motto is "Don't Be Evil?" Really? And they provide free laundry services? Wow, that must be the key. Let your employees work on whatever they want, and give them free food while they're doing it! Pretty soon you'll be bathing in stock options.

This back and forth, up and down, is incessant. One new revelation contradicts the last. And it is everywhere. Everyone is always trying to create some universal template, some guaranteed recipe for success. Just take a look at this recent bullshit exchange. It is ridiculous, and you could find a thousand more similarly formatted "secrets to success" articles. I have some patience for successful business owners giving tips (a la 37signals) — at least they have the track record to back it up — but when pundits and journalists try to chime in, it just grows into this flurry of glib, self-serving statements that all miss the point.

Call me nihilistic, or call me a relativist, but THERE IS NO UNIVERSAL TRUTH. Sorry. So please stop projecting and proclaiming. You don't have the skeleton key. There are no rules, there are no templates, there are no secret ingredients. Everything is unique and everything is dependent on its own circumstance. You can write all the books, magazine articles, or blog posts you want, but someone will always be able to prove the exception. Something will always contradict.

One reason these businesses are successful is probably because their founders didn't take advice from stupid articles in Wired, or try to ride the latest meme sweeping the blogosphere. They understood that every situation is unique, and they needed to approach it as such. What's right is what works, not what previously worked.

People will continue to make a ton of money writing certain business books, or get tons of exposure writing relevatory articles and blog posts, but that won't get us any closer to a truth. We will just continue to identify false panaceas.

I for one am just about done with the Leander Kahney's of the world and their thoughts on how a company could get everything right by doing everything wrong. Sorry buddy, but you don't know the right or wrong way to run a business, no one does. Your insight is not omniscient. If Apple gets everything right, it's because they are doing what's right for them, even if it's wrong for everyone else. "Right" is a relative term when success is so unique.