Sample Article

From Chaos to Purposeful Change: Overcoming Management Fads

North America has made itself hostage to successive waves of management fads: potentially valuable methodologies are embraced without adequate understanding, applied without adequate planning, and discarded without adequate trial. We need to break this destructive cycle, so that we can achieve the constancy of purpose that is essential to obtain sustainable results.

Introduction

North America is suffering from a disease of epidemic proportions: recurring waves of management 'fads'. The costs of this disease are massive and include: misdirected implementation efforts, lost opportunities to improve the bottom line, and damage to management credibility and employee morale. At the heart of this problem is an ongoing cycle of over-promotion, then flawed implementation, finally followed by disillusion and abandonment. This paper is a discussion of management fads: how they come about; the lifecycle that they follow, and the damage that they inflict. It also offers some strategies for treatment of this disease.

Fertile Soil

One of the great strengths of North American society is a positive, optimistic attitude towards innovation and change. This is in contrast with many older societies where history and tradition are revered, and where change is often viewed with fear and suspicion. Our open attitude can be a great advantage in business, where forces such as competition and new technology are driving increasingly rapid change. Our openness to new ideas enables us to stay on the leading edge of technology, and to pursue innovation boldly.

However, there is a flip side to this outlook: our excitement about new ideas is sometimes naïve, and our love of novelty often undermines our consistency of purpose. Thus we are easy targets for fads - too easily sold on new ones, and too quick to discard the old. When this mentality creeps into the way that we approach the task of management, we create trouble for ourselves.

Fads vs. methodologies

It is important to distinguish between the fad cycle itself and the target of a fad. The fad cycle is a process of over-promotion, flawed implementation, then disillusion and abandonment. The target of a fad is the particular methodology that is subjected to this cycle.

People often get into heated debates about whether XYZ is a sound methodology or 'just a fad'. But these are not mutually exclusive possibilities. The reality is that
"bad things happen to good methodologies"

Thus, this paper is not a commentary on TQM, Six Sigma or any other methodology. It is a critique of the sloppy application of good methodologies, so that valuable opportunities for improvement are squandered, and valuable techniques are given a bad name and discarded.

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