Debunking Management Fads

When I went to college in the late 80s, management fads were in their infancy stage. We cut our teeth on Tom Peters' books "In Search of Excellence" and "Thriving on Chaos", John Naisbitt’s “Megatrends”, and Kenneth Blanchard's "One Minute Manager".

When I taught college in the 1990s, most of those texts had already been replaced by Roger von Oech’s “A Whack on the Side of the Head”, Stephen Covey’s “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”, and there was a resurgent interest in Og Mandino’s “The Greatest Salesman in the World” (originally published in 1968).

Businesses were paying for expensive seminars with Anthony Robbins, who hopped about the stage like a frenzied lab rat being hit with repeated jolts of electricity. Women and minorities were gaining increasing footholds in the workplace. Corporate re-engineering was a hot trend in the early 1990s: Companies started streamlining to save money and "downsizing" came into vogue. Corporate Raiders were hot, employee rights were not. Born from this environment, Michael Douglas starred in the movie “Falling Down” in 1993. This movie was representative of many American workers, who were growing increasingly disenfranchised.

Again, by the turn of the century, we were met with even more theories and buzzwords: Total Quality Management (TQM), Total Productive Management (TPM), Learning Organizations, Team-Based Management, and more.

With the 9/11 attack in 2001, we were introduced to Terror Management Theory (TMT) which states “When humans are faced with their own mortality by random acts of terror, they respond in ways that show their lives have meaning and purpose.” It’s still too early to tell if this may lead to a kinder, gentler workplace, but many businesses have incorporated certain changes as a direct result of those terrorist attacks.

POSITIVE EFFECTS OF MANAGEMENT FADS

The public is very mercurial with a short attention span. To keep an idea or product new and fresh, it sometimes needs to be repackaged. Despite the fact that most of these authors and gurus would recoil in horror at this revelation, I’ll let you in on a little secret: With some small variations, most of what they tell you is nothing new.

But, these fads get people talking. Ideas that were discarded years ago may be resurrected and discussed, or evolve into something more useful. They create excitement, and excitement itself is of value in many organizations where people fall into stale routines.

NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF MANAGEMENT FADS

Fads tend to polarize people. The people who fervently follow fads and trends seem to fall into two categories. One type is the kind that is always thirsting for knowledge: The Scholar has a genuine desire to better herself and her work environment, and she’s willing to do the work needed to achieve that.

But the other type is The Groupie. His interest is shallow, at best. He is just like the old lady at the checkout counter who is almost fidgeting with impatience to get the latest issue of The National Enquirer. If he can merely pick up a few buzzwords to throw about the office, he is content. If there IS anything new to be learned, you can be sure that he won’t have the ability to utilize it.

EMPLOYEE REACTION TO FADS

Sadly, most employees have grown very resistant to new techniques and theories because they’ve encountered too many Groupies and not enough Scholars.

Let me give you an example: I was a department store manager in the early 1990s when my employer decided to re-title all salespeople. The new title was to be “Associate” because the word “salesperson” was too diminutive. This mere name change was expected to “empower” the Associates. Management had only a vague idea of what this “empowering” was supposed to do, but it was sure that this would result in higher productivity.

The name change was rolled out with great fanfare at a meeting specifically called for that purpose. Associates were told that this was a new era! People arrived as salespeople, but left as Associates!

There was one awkward moment at the meeting, when an older, more cynical Associate asked if there was a pay raise “associated” with the title. There wasn’t. Never the less, the inexperienced salespeople left, excited, while the more experienced salespeople resumed their posts, exhibiting no changes that we could see. Interested, I pulled one of them aside.

“Joy,” I asked, “What was your feeling about the meeting?”

“Same old, same old, hon,” said Joy. “Nothing will change.”

“Isn’t that a little cynical?” I asked, surprised. “You haven’t even given it a chance yet!” (I was very young and naive).

Joy smiled at me mildly, and merely said, “Wait and see.”

Joy was right. Nothing changed. And as time went by, those excited new salespeople became as jaded as their predecessors.

Unless an employee can see a relatively immediate and ongoing change (with results), she won’t have any buy-in to the new ideas. And without employee buy-in, all ideas are bound to fail. This creates a vicious cycle: Ideas that could work are labeled as frivolous, because they were initiated improperly. And that creates a lasting memory, and the unwillingness to try anything new.

MANAGEMENT REACTION TO FADS

Management can be even more resistant because, like the employees, they’ve seen many failures. But unlike their employees, they are the ones that are ultimately responsible.

Most managers feel that they’re in place because they already know how to do their job, and there’s little or no need for change. They resent any implications that they may not be doing their job well.

They grow tired of the young pups coming on to the scene, spouting the latest theories they just learned at college. And, truthfully, most managers have seen or heard such ideas before. Like their employees, if they’ve seen such ideas rolled out by a Groupie, they will be very resistant to any variations of those ideas.

HOW TO UTILIZE FADS

If you are suddenly exposed to a new idea that seems revolutionary; stop, look, and listen:

STOP: Don’t go rushing around your workplace talking about this new idea. Instead, take the time to investigate it. Do your homework. Resist the impulse to jump on the bandwagon before you've met the driver.

LOOK: Read as much as you can about it. Research it on the internet. Ask yourself if it can be utilized in your workplace.

LISTEN: If you have a mentor outside of your workplace, discuss it with her. Ask her if she’s heard anything similar to it, and get her reaction to it. Pick it apart, looking for potential weaknesses. If you’ve taken the first two steps, consider convening a panel of employees and management to get their honest input. If people are consulted before an idea is rolled out, you have a much better chance of “buy-in” if and when it’s implemented. And once the program is rolled out, make sure that you get genuine and regular feedback on its success or failure.

Although the word “fad” has a negative feel to it (think 80s hair and fishnet stockings), it remains a genuine American phenomenon. Presenting and initiating a fad in the workplace can be very challenging. However, as long as we take the scholarly approach, and weigh each idea carefully and with the knowledge that “there’s nothing new under the sun”, we may find approaches we’d not considered before.