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Management control is usually considered a rationality tool, both in its traditional approaches (substantive rationality) and in its more modern (procedural rationality) approaches. This research, based on a case study, highlights control practices which, contrary to the postulate of rationality, use ambiguity and incoherence as means of improving the firm’s profitability objectives. These practices can be interpreted as technologies of foolishness lauded by March. They are loosely coupled with official discourse to hide their contradiction with the dominant myths of rationality. Ambiguity and incoherence thus unexpectedly appear to be levers of control in the sense of Simons.