I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but HBR seems to push agenda-laden ideologies under the veneer of "science" or "business experience", which really do not map onto what most people experience. As a general source, I almost never trust HBR.
Any sort of business publication or book will be the same way. That's just the nature of something as difficult or nearly impossible to quantify as business "success" - it's hard to tell what's luck, what's skill, what's skill disguised as luck, and what's luck disguised as skill. Best to take everything with a grain of salt, be on the lookout for those all too common fun "counterintuitive" findings (procrastination is good!) That make for good titles, etc.
I always thought it was not so much that it's incredibly difficult or impossible to quantify, but more "Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know".
