The manager’s function is not to make people work, but to make it possible for people to work.

Managers are often desperate to look for anything that might improve productivity, accepting even unsubstantiated claims of new ways to increase productivity by a large margin.

Even in software development, claims that a new programming language will improve productivity greatly are often found to be false (though they may certainly have a positive effect on productivity, just not one that doubles the productivity of a worker).

Source: Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd Edition, Chapter 6