Marcia's Leadership Q and As: What Management Fads Great Leaders Abolish

Q. Our teams benchmark and try to implement best practices, but our teams still struggle, and our profit margins suffer. What should we do?

A. Many organizations chase management fads. It’s the status quo; it’s the way (for decades) that some businesses operate. They start up. As they grow, they add in the systems that other companies have adopted. What’s the problem? Organizations fill themselves with trends, fads, the latest shiny policy or system—without asking questions!

Has your management team thought about its future? Do you want to choose your goals and create systems that will reflect your values?

Here are common and popular management fads. These common practices are barriers to healthy, and collaborative productive workplaces. It may be the first time you’re hearing that these are bad practices (and your company may be full of them.) But don’t despair! It means you have a huge opportunity to discuss their impact, pivot and make new choices for a great work environment and greater customer experiences.

Fads include: performance appraisals; performance management systems; incentives, quotas, bonuses, arbitrary numerical goals; internal competition; and lean six sigma. There are more. Work to challenge these and understand why and how they are negatively impacting the productivity in your organization. If you challenge and reduce these, you can experience 50 to 80% less waste, and two to ten times higher revenues. If you want to understand how, let me know.