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Is the latest management strategy a trend that will help your organization, or is it just a passing fad?

Seth Godin says it best: “You can’t stand out if you fit in all the way.”

Since we began our careers as consultants, we have watched leaders who feel like they have to follow the latest management trend, struggle to figure out how to apply it to their organization. While I admit that there are some good management trends that we can apply to our teams and organizations, it’s difficult to see the amount of resources that go into implementing the newest trends when they don’t seem to be benefiting the organization. Those resources could have been better spent in hiring the right people, inventing new products, improving the customer experience, shortening delivering times, lowering costs, increasing sales and improving profits.

What are some of the more well known management strategies that we have experienced?

• Quality Circles
• Management by Objectives (MBO)
• Management by Walking Around (MBWA)
• Total Quality Management
• Re-Engineering
• Lean Manufacturing
• One Minute Management
• Empowerment
• Accountability
• Competencies
• Six Sigma
• Learning Organization
• Peak Performance
• Right Sizing
• Employees Are Our Most Valued Asset
• Dilbert (We had to add one for the cynics)

Great leaders figure out what their team, department or organization needs in order to rise to the next level of success. Most times, leaders have a clear idea of what needs to be done, they just don’t know how to and end up side tracked by the allure of the latest management fad.

There are some positive aspects of implementing a new management strategy in your team. First, you are introducing something different and giving people the opportunity to learn. Most employees feel positive about both themselves and the organization when they have the chance to grow. Second, almost always, some immediate positive results can be felt. People might improve a process or put a renewed focus on creating a positive customer experience. What’s important to note is that it is no longer just a fad when a sustainable idea becomes a regular and productive part of the organization’s culture. Fads tend to have a short term impact and then die off.

How do you know when something is just a passing fad? There are usually a lot of buzzwords involved in the title or official descriptions. You seem to read about it in many places and almost everyone is talking about it, practically overnight. This doesn’t always mean that it’s bad, but it definitely means that it warrants some cautious exploration and research.

The disadvantages of jumping on the latest fad can far outweigh the benefits. Some of the downsides include:

1. Undefined goals. Although a management trend worked really well for other organizations or maybe even your competitors, that doesn’t mean that it will work for you. Before implementing the new strategy, define and communicate specific goals that the new course of action will help your organization accomplish.

2. Take too much time to implement. To remain competitive in today’s world, change needs to be made quickly. To put a training initiative in place to train all employees on each new fad is no longer effective in making necessary changes.

3. Use huge amounts of resources. To put all your employees through training or attend endless meetings for something that may or may not be utilized two years from now is not the best use of an organization’s resources.

4. No payoff. When we ask leaders what specific gains they can attribute to the movement, most struggle to identify long-term, bottom line, tangible results. According to one quality expert quoted in Fortune Magazine, “Of the 58 large companies that have announced Six Sigma programs, 91 percent have trailed the S&P 500 since implementing the program.”

With huge potential disavantages, what is a leader to do when the next management fad comes along? And it will… Here are some tips to ensure that you make the right decision.

1. Stay focused on your vision. When it comes to management fads, it is easy to get distracted by what others are doing…especially your competitors. In the consulting world, there is a new trend of promoting webinars and tele-seminars. We have conducted both of these formats to deliver content. Unfortunately, the concept has not been embraced by our clients. If the whole world is zigging around you, the competitive advantage may be for your organization to zag. Stay focused.

2. Learn and investigate first. As a leader, you need to investigate the new management strategy and learn everything you possibly can about it before you budget corporate resources to implement this change in your organization. Ask yourself: “If we implement this strategy, what are our goals? Are we already doing this in our organization, and just not calling what we do the latest fad? If we implement this addition, what will not be done and is it still important work?” Last, by leaders making the tough decisions that you know need to be made for growth to occur, could you achieve the same results without using the massive resources to implement the strategy throughout the organization?

3. Create a culture of continuous improvement. If everyone in the organization is continuously improving every aspect of their job, there is less need for a new management strategy.

4. Set clear goals. If you are going to implement a new management strategy, make sure that everyone is focused on what goals will be achieved. Recognize that a management trend is only a tool to improve results. As the leader sponsoring the movement, you need to ensure the team is hitting the goals. Remember, when results have been improved and are sustained over a long period of time, no one will call your idea to implement this movement, a fad.

5. Make tough decisions. Making lasting improvements in an organization requires tough decisions. If the decisions were easy, the leaders would have already implemented the decision. Decisions like firing someone who is not the right fit; developing a new product; killing an old product; changing the way your business delivers its product or service; re-designing a process to lower costs; getting employees to do a lot more with a lot less; and aligning to new customer demands…all these take guts to make the tough decision. Making these tough decisions in a timely manner alleviates much of the need for the latest management fad. When leaders don’t make the tough decisions in a timely manner, it creates the need for management consultants, and we are grateful for the opportunity to help solve the problem.

6. Celebrate success. Take the time to recognize and acknowledge the successes that have been achieved by implementing this new way of doing business.

Before you commit to chasing the latest management trend, make sure that it’s not just a glittering panacea obscuring the root cause of your existing organizational challenges. Whatever direction you take, there is no substitute for good leadership.

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Peter Barron Stark Companies is a nationally recognized management consulting firm that specializes in employee opinion surveys, executive coaching, and leadership and employee training. Send Peter Barron Stark Companies an email at info@peterstark.com for more information about how we can help you create an organization where your employees love to come to work and your customers love to do business.