Anecdotally I've found that it's generally on point.
I think a lot of these tactics are a form of ego-pandering that distracts people from what their organizations are meant to achieve (elaborate speeches, doing things through "proper channels" that serves to give more people a voice, etc.). I've been in several organizations where decisions take forever to be made, circulating between individuals and committees with no one really holding a final say in making the decision, waiting for some form of consensus to arrive (which it never truly does). This again just gives people more and more of an excuse to insert themselves in discussions that are happening often to the detriment of actually moving things along.
I think that's completely valid, and I've often experienced that as well. I think, though, if you're properly taking the time to apply what you've learned and build sensory experiences based on the things you're learning, you'll have an artificial cap on the pace at which you can consume knowledge and be forced to learn at a speed that allows you to digest things fully and have things properly integrate with your previous base of knowledge instead of replacing things that were in your head before.
Not to say I am or anyone is good at applying everything they learned, and not to say that everything you come across should be properly assimilated, because most of it isn't really useful at helping you address the problems that you're facing. But I think if you take seriously the notion that you have to apply things to truly assimilate them, I think you'll find a healthier balance.