It sounds like you're assuming "managing up" is about managers who don't know how to do their job. I don't think this article is saying that. My best managers

It sounds like you're assuming "managing up" is about managers who don't know how to do their job. I don't think this article is saying that. My best managers weren't ones who knew every detail of each project and could give unsolicited effective advice. They were ones to whom I could tell what was going on on my project, could ask for help, could tell them what I needed, and then rely on them to follow through on helping make that happen. Sometimes that was needing more time for a deadline, sometimes it was needing a mediation in a complicated relationship with another team, and sometimes it was using manager clout to go escalate a request for compute resources. In any case, two-way communication is going to create a more effective relationship than expecting your manager to simply _know_ what you need.